Where has Outlook's TabSearchQuery IdMso gone?
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Mike VaughanEdwards
141
Reputation points
I have an add-in that added a button in a custom group to the special tabset that appears when you use Outlook's Search. A few months ago it stopped working, i.e. my group and button no longer appeared on the TabSearchQuery tab. If I do not include an IdMso for the new tab that has to be declared then it appears as a separate tab within the TabSetSearch, as you would expect, but this is noth really the behaviour I want. Giving the custom tab the IdMso of TabSearchQuery should have the effect of adding its tab group to the existing Search tab.
Has Microsoft deprecated the TabSearchQuery IdMso? Or is there some other change that stops it from working?
Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business
Developer technologies | Visual Basic for Applications
Developer technologies | Visual Basic for Applications
An implementation of Visual Basic that is built into Microsoft products.
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ChristyZhang-MSFT 26,186 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff2021-09-16T02:49:41.2+00:00 Hi @Mike VaughanEdwards ,
Welcome to our forum!
Looks like your issue is related to development, please kindly understand that the Outlook tag here we mainly focus on general issues about Outlook desktop client. In order to better solve your problem, we will add "office-vba-dev" tag.
According to my personal research, the following related article is for your reference. Hope to help you.
How do I add an option to SearchTools menu in TabSearchQuery in Outlook 2013? (C#)Thanks for your understanding and hope your issue would be resolved soon.
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Andrei Smolin (Add-in Express) 1 Reputation point2021-09-20T14:08:00.203+00:00 Hello Mike,
Our customer found you can use TabSearchQueryRefineSearchFirst. They haven't published that idMso and you do not know in what Outlook builds you can use it. Also, TabSearchQuery still works, sort of. Check the forums on our web site.
Regards from Poland (CEST),
Andrei Smolin
Add-in Express Team Leader -
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Faceit Finders 0 Reputation points2025-12-09T07:03:50.42+00:00 It seems Microsoft changed how the Search ribbon works in recent Outlook updates, and the TabSearchQuery IdMso no longer attaches custom groups the way it used to. I faced a similar issue while working on a project for Faceit Finder, where custom UI elements stopped merging with the built-in Search tab. Outlook now treats that tab as more restricted, so custom groups often get pushed into a separate tab. Since there’s no official deprecation notice, it’s likely an internal ribbon change rather than a bug.