office 2010 email search freezes

Have you checked the size of the user's .pst file?  If that has not been cleaned/archived lately that can cause the search to go extra long.

Another suggestion might bee to look at the actual search criteria.  Are there too many wildcards being used?  Is the search possibly too broad and therefore trying to load an enormous set of results?

Another thing is to check where the user is searching.  Are they searching just the current folder?  Or are they searching All Mail Items or All Outlook Items which can take longer depending on how many items there are in each category.  (Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, etc.)

I will look if it's been archived of late next week.  Their search criteria is very specific.

We did a disk cleanup and archived.  She will let me know

It still runs slow enough that she minimizes Outlook and returns to it five minutes later.   Other users performing the same query w/ similar machine specs have no problem pulling these queries.

One thing to try might be to have all work orders under a certain folder so she is ONLY searching work orders and not other extraneous email.
Can you paste an example of the actual search string here? (Use the "code" button above the comment box.)  There may be an "error" in the search string that is introducing a wildcard or something.  Just trying to check all possibilities.

I will tell her to filter her email accordingly.  We also upgraded to SBS 2011.  I will look into it further next week.

Nothing else offered a clear resolution