How to Search Multiple Accounts at Once in Outlook
- New Outlook does not support searching across multiple accounts at once
- You have to select each account individually and search within All Folders
- Classic Outlook for Windows can search all mailboxes at once via the scope selector
- There is no native single search box that spans every connected account in New Outlook
You've got a work account, a personal account, and maybe a shared mailbox all in one Outlook window, but when you search, you can only see one of them at a time. When you're hunting for an email and aren't sure which account it landed in, this gets frustrating fast. Here's the current state and how to work around it.
Why you can't search all accounts at once in New Outlook
Multi-account search is officially unsupported in New Outlook as of 2026. The documented behavior is that you select each account individually and search within All Folders for that account. No scope spans everything at once. It's been requested on roadmaps since mid-2024 and still hasn't shipped.
The reason traces back to New Outlook's server-side search model: each account is searched against its own server context, and there's no unified local index stitching them together. Classic Outlook, which kept a single local Windows index across mailboxes, handled this far better.
How to search across accounts today
1. Search each account one at a time
The supported method, tedious as it is, is to switch to each account, set the scope to All Folders, and run the same query. Repeat per account. It works, but it's manual.
2. Use classic Outlook's all-mailboxes scope
On classic Outlook for Windows, the scope selector next to the search box includes All Mailboxes, which searches every connected account at once. This is one area where classic clearly outperforms New Outlook. Switch back via the New Outlook toggle when multi-account search is critical to your workflow.
3. Consolidate with forwarding (use with care)
Some people forward secondary accounts into one primary mailbox so everything is searchable in one place. This centralizes search but mixes your mail streams and has privacy and retention trade-offs, so weigh it before committing.
4. Search the web app per account
Outlook on the web searches one account per session. Signing into each separately can sometimes return more complete results than the desktop, but it doesn't solve the "all at once" problem either.
The missing feature
Every native workaround is really just "search each account separately, faster." None give you a single query across everything, and the one that comes closest, classic Outlook's All Mailboxes, depends on staying on a client Microsoft is phasing out. When you live across several accounts, native Outlook makes you do the merging in your head.
One search across every account
Inbox Search is a free Outlook add-in that indexes your mailbox locally and returns ranked results across all your synced folders in a single query, — by meaning and by exact words — without the server-side cutoff that drops older mail. No email content is transmitted outside your device, and the index stays private to you. Runs on New Outlook, classic Outlook, the web client, and Mac.
Frequently asked questions
Can New Outlook search all accounts at once? No. Multi-account search is officially unsupported in New Outlook. You select each account individually and search within All Folders for that account.
How do I search both my work and personal accounts in Outlook? In New Outlook, search each account separately. In classic Outlook for Windows, set the search scope to All Mailboxes to search every connected account in one query.
Does classic Outlook search multiple mailboxes? Yes. Classic Outlook for Windows includes an All Mailboxes scope that searches across every connected account at once, which New Outlook does not offer.
Will Microsoft add multi-account search to New Outlook? It has been on roadmaps since mid-2024 but had not shipped as of 2026. Treat it as unavailable for now rather than imminent.