Spotlight not indexing outlook 2011 files

Question

I've found several articles on Outlook 2011 search not working and it pointing to issues with spotlight. I tried all the proposed fixes including the changes listed here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2473212. Nothing seems to be working though these are all geared towards Lion 10.7. Also, in spotlight on 10.8 I don't see a mail messages, I see Mail and Chats but it has a mail.app logo next to it which I'm assuming is looking at a different directory. How can remediate this problem? Not having search functionality is not acceptable. Please help.

Answer 1

Hi,
Just found a solution to this problem and seems to be working.
Open System preferences.
Select Spotlight
Select Privacy
Open a separate Finder window and select 'Documents'.
Go find 'Microsoft User data'
Then find 'Office 2011 Identities'.
Drag 'Office 2011 Identities' to the other window open "Privacy" amongst the spotlight settings.
What this does is tell spotlight to NOT search in outlook, the very opposite to what you want!
However, you then need to highlight the 'Office 2011 Identities' folder and click the - sign which removes it. Your now telling it you want to INCLUDE this folder for when spotlight searches.
By removing adding and removing it, its a bit like the classic IT solution of switch it off and on again. It forces the spotlight to re index everything and therefore including outlook for when searching using spotlight.
Depending on your outlook file size, it could take hours or even days so be patient. If you run a search for something to do with outlook in 'spotlight' you should see its indexing with a blue progress bar. Its working.
Lastly, incase your wondering why this answer involves spotlight and you just wanted a fix for the outlook search and filters, its because outlook for Mac actually uses spotlight behind the scenes.