Outlook 2016 error – Instant search encountered a problem while trying to display results

Everytime I recently tried to do a quick search in my contacts I was getting the following error message:

Instant search encountered a problem while trying to display results.  Modifying your query may resolve the problem.

 

After reading numerous posts about checking the indexing options I eventually solved the problem by doing a repair of my pst file.

  1. Navigate to the C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16 folder and run SCANPST.EXE

 

2. Browse to the location of your PST file which is usually in the following folder:

C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

3. If it finds any problems let it repair them.

4. Reopen Outlook and try searching again!

 



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