Running into a endless loop of “Search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed” issue while searching within a folder in Outlook and missing elements in the results?
This is an occasional behavior that I have particularly noticed with Windows 7 and Office 2010, but not limited to this software version combination. The issue is in fact with the Windows indexing service that just give up at some point indexing content (please don’t ask me why, it just does and nothing is logged into the Event Viewer, so who knows!)
The workaround I have found to resolve this is to disable and re-enable “Windows Search”, here is the procedure below :
1. Save all your work and close all applications (yes, you will need to reboot soon!)
2. Open the Control Panel
3. Click on Programs and Features
4. On the left pane, click on Turn Windows features on or off
5. Un-check the box for Windows Search item
6. Reboot
7. Startover the steps above from #2 to #4
8. Check the box for Windows Search item
9. Reboot
Once your computer will restart, it may be a bit slower for a little while during the re-indexing process. Search functionality should return all results in Outlook from now.