Searching Current Folder of a shared mailbox in Outlook Desktop returns no results

Last Updated: March 19, 2025

ISSUE

When a delegate with full access permissions tries to search in a Shared Mailbox using “Current Folder” as the search scope, the following message will be shown “Outlook cannot perform your search”. This error appears at the bottom of the message list, and it appears that search did not actually run or returns no results. This issue starts occurring after updating to Version 2403.

STATUS: FIXED

After the initial fix for searching shared mailboxes with “Current Folder” scope, a secondary issue was found. The second issue is unable to search on prem shared mailboxes when primary mailbox is in Exchange Online. The second issue is now fixed starting in Beta Channel build 18713.15010 and will go to Current Channel Preview and Current Channel with build 18730.20000. If you experienced the second issue, please test now that the fixed build is in the Beta Channel. All fixes for shared mailboxes are in these builds and service search is enabled in Beta Channel, Current Channel Preview, and Current Channel.  

The Outlook Team re-enabled the feature that supports searching shared mailboxes and shared mailbox archives with service search. This change is enabled to the following:
Current Channel – has service search starting with build 17830.20138 and will get the fix for on prem shared mailboxes when it gets to build 18730.20000.  At that time Current Channel will have all the search fixes.
Monthly Enterprise Channel – the service search feature is on hold for MEC until the fix for the on prem shared mailbox search issue gets to this channel.
If you mitigated by disabling Download Shared Folders, you can re-enable it. For more information, go to Turn on Cached Exchange Mode.  

Additional Resources

Troubleshooting Outlook search issues