It was great of Outlook to set some search folders up for us already, but what if the options aren’t quite to our liking? Or, what happens if you change your mind about criteria you want to use?

 

The good news is we can customize search folders to fix either of those problems! To customize any search folder (even the ones that Outlook has created) just right-click on it and click Customize this Search Folder. When you do that, the window shown below will appear. The first option in this window is a text box. You can type in this box to change the name of the search folder. The next button, Criteria, will bring up a small window with just the options you need. (For example, in the box above, clicking on criteria brings up a box prompting you to enter the number of kilobytes.) The last button lets you pick what folders this query should look at. This is really useful if you want the query to search only a few folders in Outlook. Once you click the OK button your changes will be saved.

 

You can also customize other aspects of a search folder by right-clicking on it. When you do this, you’ll see the same set of options that other mail folders in Outlook have, including deleting or renaming the folder. Remember that deleting the search folder doesn’t delete the messages shown in it.