"Jennifer Q" wrote in message
...
I am using Outlook 2003 SP3 on WinXP SP2. In Outlook, when I use the
Tools | Find feature for a very basic search, I have noticed
something odd. It seems that Outlook finds the oldest messages first
and the newest messages last. This does not seem so helpful to me.

Can anyone shed some explanantion on how Outlook conducts this
search, and why the oldest messages are retrieved first? Also, is
there a way to change this behavior? I'd like Outlook to retrieve
the newest messages first.


That's been a sore point with Outlook's so-called "advanced" find for
a long time. Regardless of how you dictate sort order by clicking on
the column headers or changing the view, the search progresses through
the database in date-order. That sucks because most of the time the
item you are looking for is not months old but just days old yet you
have to wait for the search to finally get through months of items
before it shows the one that you wanted. So you wait, and wait, and
eventually the post shows up and only then can you stop the search
since you don't care about any further matches. Don't know who was
the programmer that figured the database should be searched in
ascending date order. Must've had his head in the chair and his butt
pointed at the screen.