Prof Wonmug wrote:

Yeah, and you Microsoft apologists can make whatever excuses you want
to about the half-baked crap coming out of Redmond.

On my screen, the Outlook folders (that is what Outlook calls them, in
case you are also confused about that) are displayed in a tree
structure, so they ARE a tree structure. They should act like it.

It doesn't matter. Microsoft has alweays been arrogant. Google (or
someone) will do to them what they did to IBM because of their
arrogance. I, for one, will be applauding. You can continue making
excuses for their half-baked, overpriced software. Good luck.

When you code your own software to distribute to others then you, too, will
realize there will tons of demands from users for picyune features that will
waste your time. Each user thinks their wants are important and universal.
If you want it then everyone must want it. If you contact with Microsoft to
contract with them a large sum of money to make changes then I'm sure they
will listen. Right now they listen to their biggest customers, and that's
not you or me. Corporations that buy thousands of licenses get heard.

Also, corporations often have the resources in programming talent to have
their staff create add-ons for their special needs. Outlook is extensible
through macros and add-ons. Of course, anyone distributing their work to
other users often wants to get remunerated for their effort, so what you
want might not be free. For example, there is Sperry Software's Global
Search and Replace add-on:

http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outloo...nd-Replace.asp

I can't find a picture showing its search results to see what properties it
lists for a selected item. You'll have to ask them about its features or
find out if they have a trial version (since it is payware).

There probably was some noise from corporate customers for their employees
to more quickly find their prior e-mails and peruse their history of
communications. Instead of focusing on just one solution usable in just one
application, Microsoft decided to follow suit to other search engines and
provide a local search engine that you can use across many applications and
in more locations than just where Outlook puts its message store.

http://media.techtarget.com/digitalg..._Queries_A.jpg

The above shows a screenshot of Windows Search. There is a properties pane
at the bottom. I doubt that is the only properties that are collected for a
selected item. However, I don't bother running any search engine on my host
as they always seem to get in my way but then I already organize my data
very well and find it a waste of time to use a search engine, have it waste
background CPU cycles and disk accesses doing indexing, or locking up files
that I want to access during its indexing (I haven't retested lately to find
out if any of them will use Windows' Volume Shadow Service to permit access
to a locked file by instead indexing a shadow copy much how good backup
programs work).

There may be newsgroups that discuss Windows Search. If not, you could
start a new thread asking if Windows Search will give you more properties
for items found in Outlook's message store, like the entire hierarchy for
the folder in which the item is "stored".

That someone doesn't code their product to do something that you want is not
a bug. It simply means they didn't consider your needs. There's no way
that a fixed amount of code is going to encompass everyone's needs. We're
just users here like yourself. No one here has to apologize for anything
made by Microsoft. In fact, it's you that needs to apologize for stubbornly
choosing to use non-unique folder names that led to this problem. Your
shortsightness caused the problem. No one visits here works for Microsoft.
None of the MVPs work for Microsoft. You are asking for a feature that
doesn't exist in a product over which we have absolutely no control
regarding its code. Other than a macro or add-on to extend Outlook's
behaviors or by using a search engine (which are designed to index far more
than just Outlook's files), I'm not sure what else you think we are
supposedly to magically conjure up for you.

I think this conversation is over. Outlook doesn't have the native features
you want. You can call it a bug if that makes you happy. You can claim we
users here are apologizing for a product over which we have no control if
that makes you happy. Doesn't change the situation that you want more than
the product provides. The product is extensible and you now have the choice
of finding some add-on that does what you want or to roll your own or pay
someone to create one for you. You could ask about or trial the search
engines (Windows Search, Google Desktop, Copernic, etc) to see if any of
them give you the additional features that you want and do so without
forking out any money.