I've recently changed from using Outlook 2003 on an old Celeron PC running
Win 2k, to a new P4 machine with XP.

On the old set-up, I could click on the 'From' column header to sort
messages in a mail folder by sender, then start typing the name of the
sender to quickly take me to the messages from that person. This was very
useful and I used this feature regularly, although it only seemed to work
for the first three characters of the name, the fourth character entered
would then take the cursor to the first instance of a name beginning with
this letter. This was fine as the first three letters would be more than
enough to get me to the right message.

Since I've been using the new set-up, this feature only works on the first
letter I type, so if I type M, I, K, toe find messages from Mike, I actually
end up with the first message from senders starting with K. The best I can
get is just typing the M, which takes me to the first message from senders
starting with M, then move down to the sender I want using the cursor keys.

It's only a small detail, but when you use it all the time, it's a
noticeable step backwards.

Any ideas why this is happening?

Can I fix the problem?

--
Jonathan Finney