Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours

When you have a large number of contacts, it's sometimes difficult to find the contact you need just by browsing. Occasionally the contact you need is filed using a different format than the rest of your contacts or you forget part of the contact's name . Outlook offers several ways to quickly find any contact.

  • From any folder, type part of the contact's name in the Type a Contact to Find field of the Find a Contact button and press Enter. The field is located on the Standard toolbar. This brings up the Choose a Contact dialog, which contains a list of all matching contacts, as shown in Figure 10.3.

    Figure 10.3. Use the Find a Contact dialog on the Standard toolbar to bring up contacts with matching first, middle, or last names .

In the example shown here, I entered jes and all contacts with a first, middle, or last name beginning with jes were displayed. You should enter at least three letters , especially if you have a large number of contacts.

When you know part of the contact's name but aren't sure of the spelling, use initials or letters contained in their name. For example, in my Contacts list, entering j p or j por will return the contacts for Jessie Poremsky, Jim Porter, and Reja Aportee.

Note that when you use a space in the search, Outlook searches differently, depending on where the first letter is found. Outlook uses pattern matching and if the first letter at the beginning of the word, it looks for the second letter at the beginning of the next word.

If the first letter is found in the middle, Outlook looks in the middle of the second word. Because j is in the middle of Reja, Outlook looks in the middle of Aportee for a match with por. Mark J LaPorte won't be found searching for j por , but AJ LaPorte and Jim Porter will be found.

  • Use custom views and filters to limit the contacts that are visible in the folder.

  • Use Find or Advanced Find.

Views and Advanced Find use the same filter dialog and the same criteria. Use views when you're working in the Contacts folder and need to see items from only one folder; use Advanced Find when you use multiple contacts folders and need to search in them all.

Open the Advanced Find dialog from anywhere in Outlook using Tools, Advanced Find. Choose the Contacts folder and contact items, enter your criteria, and find the items.

You can flag contacts with colored flags and set follow-ups, which will fire if the contact is stored in the default Contacts folder.

Quick Flags are not supported on contact forms.

The Find dialog might seem redundant with the Find a Contact command, both of which are on the Standard toolbar. Although this is true to some extent, Find is still useful for finding contacts. Like the Find a Contact command, you can use Find from any folder and search for contacts. By selecting which folders to search in, you can find all messages, calendar items, and contacts meeting the criteria entered in the Look For: field. The Find a Contact command finds only contacts.

For more information about using Find, see Hour 15, "Searching Outlook."

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