Find in older versions of Outlook can search for partial words at any position in a word, while Instant search in Outlook 2007 only searches the beginning of the word.
For example, in Outlook 2003, searching for “look” will find both Outlook and Lookout but in Outlook 2007, Instant search will only see “look” in Lookout. If you need to find all instances of the word, you’ll need to use Advanced Find.
Published February 28, 2008. Last updated on June 17, 2011.