Knowledge Base

OL97: Search Subfolders Not Available for Public Folders

Article ID: 172567

Article Last Modified on 1/20/2007

Microsoft Outlook 97 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q172567

SYMPTOMS

When you choose to search a set of Public folders in Microsoft Outlook 97, the option to search subfolders is not available.

CAUSE

The search subfolders option is unavailable for public folders by design. It is unavailable because it is possible to distribute public folders and subfolders over several different servers and the Find Items function cannot perform distributed queries across multiple computers.

Note If the public folders and subfolders that you want to search are on a single computer, the search subfolders option is still unavailable for public folders.

WORKAROUND

You must search each public folder and its subfolders independently.

MORE INFORMATION

The Find Items function can only search below one folder level when it is assured that all lower level folders are on the same server. This condition is true for Mailbox folders and local Personal Folders stores (PST) but not for Public folders.

Steps to Reproduce Problem

On the Tools menu, click Find Items.
On the Find dialog box, click Browse.
On the Select Folder(s) dialog box, move to and click any Public folder.

RESULT: The Search Subfolders option becomes unavailable.

Additional query words: greyed grayed out

Keywords: kbinfo KB172567