Is there a way to global search on a Windows Phone?

[Madam ImAdam]

I"m frustrated with the lack of good search functionality on this phone. I can't easily find content on my windows phone like I can on my ipad using their spotlight search. My experience is that cortana is terribly ineffective at returning content searches on my phone.

I received some emails and a few texts this week from my kids camp director, who is not one of my Contacts, about a specific time and place for drop off for a field trip. The emails were sent to the entire parent email list, some of whom are in my Contacts. When I needed to arrive there on tiime I couldn't remember which site was for drop and which one for pick up.

Looking through the vast number of emails I have, I couldn't find the one with the specifics, but I knew the name of the school where we were supposed to be. I tried searching my linked mail inboxes, but it couldn't find anything for the school name. A cortana search returned bing results ( which so far, for me, are 100% of the time useless - as I am never am looking for Bing results). Turns out the name of the school only appeared in a text that was sent by one of the other parents, and in the body of an email, which Cortana could only find in two messages from a year ago. The ones from this week it couldn't find.

Does anyone else have this much trouble? What's the best way to use Search on 8.1? (I ended up calling my wife who of course was able to tell me where to meet!)

 

[Jas00555]

That was a lot of writing for a simple question . Anyways, when you get the Bing search, just swipe to the left. It'll search your phone.

 

[Madam ImAdam]

That was a lot of writing for a simple question . Anyways, when you get the Bing search, just swipe to the left. It'll search your phone.

Yes, but content within the body of mails or messages isn't reliably searched in my experience. Cortana searches vs searches within an app produce different results.

Performing the same search within the mail app does return more results, with additional options to refine the time period and folder, BUT, I have to first know WHERE to be searching; i, e., mail, messages, etc... Spotlight search just works more simply and provides the results I was looking for the first time.

 

[Jas00555]

Yes, but content within the body of mails or messages isn't reliably searched in my experience.

I guess it depends on the date of the email. I usually have no problem finding what I need. Just out of curiosity, does typing the name of the school find the correct email?

 

[anon(123856)]

You could try this Phone Search | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

I've used it but not extensively.

 

[Madam ImAdam]

You could try this Phone Search | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

I've used it but not extensively.

Thanks, just tried it... but "Phone Search is not able to search SMS, email, music or todos"

 

[anon(123856)]

I only used to search the calendar and contacts. Sorry it didn't work for you. I am surprised that there is no phone search in WP. It seems like a basic necessity.

 

[Madam ImAdam]

There is Phone search natively through Cortana, it's just that I find it to not be very robust in searching the content contained within the body of messages or emails as compared to running the same search from within the given app. (At least as compared to my experiences running the same kinds of searches on my ipad).

 

[anon(123856)]

I haven't used Cortana so that explains why I missed that. I would prefer just a text based search myself, either global or within the app itself. I search mostly in Outlook and the calendar.