Hi Russ,

First Merry Christmas, I hope yours and your familys was a happy one.  I am
sorry it has taken so long for me to reply, but I am being watched and
treated for three different types of cancer.  Not much fun and I am in and
out of the hospital so it takes a little more time to respond.

I followed the instructions and discovered two different things.  When I
went to the control panel, indexing and advanced it told me that indexing was
not on.  I also tried tools, check the indexing status and it tells me that
Outlook is currently indexing your items with 296 items remaining in Personal
Folders and 336 items remaining across all open mailboxes.

When I go to search options all fields in Indexing, Search, Deleted Items,
Instant Search Pane are blank even though I have checked the ones I want.  In
Indexing the only box available is Personal Folders.  When I check them and
click ok I get this error message "A problem was encountered while trying to
change which data files to index.  Some of those changes may have not been
saved."  When I go back to check none of them have been saved.  I do not know
what I have done.  I use the instant search for finding my contacts and it
used to work beautifully.

Thank you for your time and expertise.  I am looking forward to trying
whatever you suggest in hopes that I will again be able to use the instant
search feature.  

Sincerely, Michael