Windows (Outlook 2010) search/index issues

[ssal]

I am running Windows 10 and use MS Outlook 2010 for my email. I haven't upgrade to the latest and newest MS Office since I retired 10 years ago because I use the computer for my internal personal use.

I have been having some search issue with my Outlook so I decided to rebuild the index. The first 200,000 ran quickly overnight, but then it started to slow down to a crawl. I left it on and turn off the sleeping mode so the machine would run forever. It took another 2 days and nights and now 440,000 items indexed and counting, slowly.

I think I may have too many items to index because I included my external backup drive.

Looking for some tips on how to fix this issue.

As long as it's still running, I will leave it to run for the next few days, if need to. I think I will modify my index structure to include only the essential folders like my photos, documents and videos. And I will exclude my external 5 gb HDD trying to keep the size to around 200,000 items.

Appreciate any insight.

 

[voyagerfan99]

Are you leaving Outlook open? Items don't index unless you do that. You can see how many items are left to index by clicking the search bar>Search Tools>Index Status. If there are items left to index it will list them there.

I also recommend disabling indexer backoff when PC is in use so it continues to index when you are using the PC.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/93655-enable-disable-indexer-backoff-windows.html

 

[ssal]

When I posted this thread, I was in the middle of rebuilding the index. I had not modified the folder selection so it still included the external backup drive. It took almost three days and night and it was still going with about 490,000 items indexed and more to go.

The problem is, the speed of the index slowed to a crawl in the last 25%. I abandoned the operation and decided to remove the external backup drive.

I started a new rebuild and it took 2 days and one night to complete. 330,000 items.

The Outlook search is working now.