3 Easy Methods to Quickly Find All Overdue Items in Your Outlook

Some users frequently need to find all overdue items in Outlook. Therefore, in this article, we will introduce 3 methods to achieve it.

With a great amount of tasks or flagged items in Outlook, at times, you may have no enough time to deal with all of them. In this case, there may be lots of overdue items in your Outlook. So, frequently, you need to quickly find them. Thereinafter, we will introduce 3 simple approaches to get it.

Method 1: Find Overdue Items via Instant Search

When it comes to search something, the first tool that will occur to users’ mind is instant search. Thus, you can follow the steps below to find out all overdue items via instant search.

1. First off, press “Ctrl + E” to launch “Search” ribbon.
2. On the “Search” tab, click “All Outlook Items” in the “Scope” group.
3. Then, type the following search criteria in the search bar.

Due: <= yesterday  followupflag: <>completed

4. At once, all the overdue items will be listed out, as shown in the following screenshot.

Method 2: Create a Search Folder for Overdue Mails

If you only want to quickly find the overdue emails, instead of manually searching every time, you have a better choice – create a search folder for overdue mails. It can be realized by the steps below.

1. At first, right click “Search Folders” and choose “New Search Folder”.
2. Then, in the popup window, select “Create a custom Search Folder” and click “Choose”.
3. Next, specify a name, such as “Overdue Mails” and click “Criteria”.
4. Subsequently, you need to add the following filters on “Advanced” tab.

Due Date > on or before > Yesterday
Flag Status > not equal to > Completed

5. After that, click a series of “OK” to save this search folder.
6. Lastly, when you open the search folder, you can see that all overdue emails are gathered here.

Method 3：Create Specialized “Search” Macro for Reuse

Provided that you frequently need to do such a search on all overdue items, it is highly suggested to create a specialized “Search” macro button for reuse. You can get it by the operations below.

1. At the outset, trigger Outlook VBA editor via “Alt + F11”.
2. Then, put the code into an unused module.

Sub FindAllOverdueItems()
    Dim objInboxFolder As Outlook.Folder
    Dim strFilter As String
    Dim objSearchExplorer As Outlook.Explorer
 
    Set objInboxFolder = Application.Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
    Set objSearchExplorer = Application.Explorers.Add(objInboxFolder)
 
    'Time is accurate to "before current time"
    strFilter = "Due: < " & Now() & " AND " & "followupflag: <> " & "Completed" & ""
 
    With objSearchExplorer
        .Search strFilter, olSearchScopeAllOutlookItems
        .ShowPane olFolderList, False
        .ShowPane olNavigationPane, False
        .ShowPane olOutlookBar, False
        .ShowPane olToDoBar, False
        .ShowPane olPreview, False
        .Display
    End With
End Sub

3. Afterwards, exit the current window.
4. Later, follow the “Optional Step” in the post – “How to Run VBA Code in Your Outlook” to add this macro to Quick Access Toolbar or ribbon.
5. Since then, every time when you are required to search overdue items, you can directly click the new macro button.

Clean up Old and Useless Items in Outlook

It is advisable to archive those old and useless items at regular intervals due to an unquestioned fact – Outlook file is more vulnerable if it’s oversized. None is ready to encounter Outlook corruption in that it is quite knotty. It cannot be dealt with by the inbox repair tool. The most effective solution is either an experienced and powerful Outlook fix tool like DataNumen Outlook Repair, or specialized recovery service.

Author Introduction:

Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair SQL Server and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com