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I’m implementing a password-reset and email-verification flow. After we send an email to the user, we want to provide quick-access links such as:

“Search this email in Gmail”

“Search this email in Outlook (Web)”

Here is the code we currently use:

public openGmailSearch(): void {
    const gmailQuery = encodeURIComponent(`from:${this.domain} subject:"${this.subject}"`);
    window.open(`https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/${gmailQuery}`, "_blank");
}

public openOutlookSearch(): void {
    const outlookQuery = encodeURIComponent(`from:${this.domain} AND subject:"${this.subject}"`);
    window.open(`https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/search?keyword=${outlookQuery}`, "_blank");
}

For Gmail, this works perfectly. I can open Gmail with a pre-filled search filter, for example:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/from:[email protected] subject:"Password Reset"

Gmail accepts the #search/<query> format and automatically applies the search filter.

Problem: How to do the same for Outlook Web?

I’m trying to achieve the same behavior in Outlook Web (outlook.live.com / outlook.office.com). These are the URL formats I have tried:

https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/search?keyword=...
https://outlook.live.com/mail/search?q=...
https://outlook.live.com/mail/0/#/search?query=...
https://outlook.office.com/mail/search?q=...

All of these simply open Outlook Web, but none of them apply the search filter, and nothing appears in the search bar.

Question

Is there a URL format (official or undocumented) that allows opening Outlook Web with a pre-filled search query (similar to Gmail’s #search/... behavior)?

Or is this feature simply not supported by Outlook Web?

If it’s not possible at all, is there any official documentation or reference confirming that Outlook Web does not support URL-based search injection?

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  • Huh that's interesting. Just hopped into my outlook email. Noticeably when I perform a search the url doesn't change. But it does when I select an email to view. DevTools shows that outlook keeps its search behind a Post request. Google seems to be using Post request as well, but I'm guessing they're pulling the data from the url to construct that post request, and Outlook simply isn't. Commented 2 days ago

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