Microsoft has revamped search in Outlook to make it easier to find specific emails. The changes focus on ranking results more effectively, improving performance in some conditions and collecting feedback from users.
Outlook now presents seven ranked results rather than three. The ranking considers factors including how recent a message is, who sent it and how much users have interacted with it. Microsoft is also introducing a feedback system that allows users to rate results, giving the company a way to refine its ranking.
The update is designed to improve searches involving common words such as “the,” “and” and “is,” which can otherwise lead to irrelevant results. Microsoft illustrated the change with a comparison of searches for “the FY27 budget” using the old and new Outlook search.
The new ranking layout is available in both new and Classic Outlook. In Classic Outlook, the app can also fall back to locally indexed content when connectivity is poor. Microsoft said that feature is coming to new Outlook later.
Microsoft also reported faster search results for Classic Outlook and said recent improvements have reduced latency for the slowest 5% of Outlook searches. The ranking system uses a small language model built specifically for Outlook and trained through distillation under the supervision of a larger model.
Sources: Windows Central.