Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Finding Messages

In a short time—shorter than you might think—you’ll collect a lot of email messages, contacts, and other Entourage items. Trying to find a particular morsel of information just by browsing becomes impractical. (“I remember reading something about a good deal on Mac memory in some mailing-list posting just last week. Now where the heck did I file it?…”)

For Office 2008, Entourage has tied into Mac OS X’s Spotlight search system, making it easier to find the Entourage information you’re looking for—and speeding up the process dramatically. If you find yourself searching for the same or similar thing, over and over, you can save your search and reuse it in the future with a single click.

Searching in Entourage

To conduct a basic search, just type the word or phrase you’re searching for the Search field at the right end of the Entourage toolbar. When you stop typing, Entourage starts searching, displays the Search bar, and fills in the list with the items it finds (see Figure 11-35). This search examines not only the sender, recipient, and subject of emails, but also the contents of the message. The same is true for contacts, calendar, notes, and tasks: all text is fair game.

Use the buttons on The Search bar to narrow or expand your search. For example, when searching for email you can search in the current folder, all folders on your computer, all messages, or in everything—which means everything in Entourage.

Figure 11-35. Use the omnipresent Search field in the Entourage ...