From what I've read, Outlook 2007 will make the installation of Windows
Desktop Search mandatory, and will use that technology to search emails.

Seems that WDS is basically the 'Indexing service' on steroids, in other
words a daemon that compiles a database of search-information in the
background, when the computer is otherwise idle.

Just occurs to me though, if that 's how it works, then surely it would be a
pretty useless way to search emails; if I (say) want to find all emails from
a particular person, then I want the ones I've just received 30sec ago to be
included. If the recent ones aren't yet indexed (because the computer has
never been idle since their arrival) then would it include them? Or not?

In this respect, email is fundamentally different from an archive of files.

Does anyone know, have the coders taken this into account?

My experience is that the index results will warn you if there are unindexed messages and will suggest that you might want to wait a while. I've seen that message only a couple of times in more than a year's use of Outlook 2007. The background indexer seems to find plenty of opportunity to keep the index up to date.

As a practical matter, most people can see and locate the mail they got 30 seconds ago just fine. It's the mail they got 30 days ago that this new search feature is meant to address.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.turtleflock.com/olconfig/index.htm
and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx

"Ian" wrote in message ...
From what I've read, Outlook 2007 will make the installation of Windows
Desktop Search mandatory, and will use that technology to search emails.

Seems that WDS is basically the 'Indexing service' on steroids, in other
words a daemon that compiles a database of search-information in the
background, when the computer is otherwise idle.

Just occurs to me though, if that 's how it works, then surely it would be a
pretty useless way to search emails; if I (say) want to find all emails from
a particular person, then I want the ones I've just received 30sec ago to be
included. If the recent ones aren't yet indexed (because the computer has
never been idle since their arrival) then would it include them? Or not?

In this respect, email is fundamentally different from an archive of files.

Does anyone know, have the coders taken this into account?