Office 365, Exchange Online, Recieved search is wrong

Daniel Kaliel 1,236

We use Office 365 (current channel) and are migrating users to Exchange Online. One of test user ran this search in Outlook.

Received: 06/25/2021

The result is that we get results from 6:00 pm the day before to 6:00 pm of that day. It appears that Outlook is not adjusting for our TimeZone which is currently Mountain Standard Time.

When I check Exchange Online, everything appears correct:
<user> en-CA yyyy-MM-dd h:mm tt Mountain Standard Time

When I check their PC everything appears correct.

What am I missing?

Jade Liang-MSFT 9,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-06-29T02:21:09.793+00:00

Hi @Daniel Kaliel ,

Did these messages display correct date in the user's Inbox before you search in Outlook client ? And What's mode that you are working with(cached exchange mode or online mode)?

According to my tests on Outlook 365, the time of all messages in my Inbox would be changed if I changed the time zone of my Outlook/PC, and I could search all messages in this time zone correctly.

For your issue, if you are working with cached exchange mode, in order to avoid the interference of corrupted local outlook data file, it's recommended to switch to online mode and re-search in Outlook to check if the issue has any differences there(File>Account settings>Account settings>uncheck the option of cached exchange mode).

If it could work normally in online mode, please try to recreate a new Outlook profile and re-add your account to check(Control Panel>Mail>Show Profiles>Add>Readd your account)

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Daniel Kaliel 1,236 Reputation points

2021-06-29T20:43:07.817+00:00

They do show the correct timestamp in Outlook before the search. I'll include a screenshot.

We are running in cached mode, and I get the point about taking it out of cached mode to test, but unfortunately we have several pieces of software that require cached mode so we have to solve this with cached mode enabled and can't worry about what happens otherwise.

We have tried even re-imaging a PC and wiped everything. The issue still remains.

In the screen shot you will see that I searched for all email on the 25th of June. The results include an email I received on the 24th after 6:00pm and nothing after June 25th from 6:00pm onwards.
Jade Liang-MSFT 9,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-06-30T10:50:54.217+00:00

Hi @Daniel Kaliel ,

Thanks for your update.

I noticed that you couldn't test on online mode, in order to further confirm if the issue is related to your account or Outlook client, please login to your owa, or try to configure other personal account on your Outlook client to check if the issue has any difference there.

If you also couldn't search normally on owa or other account could search normally in your Outlook client, the issue may be more related to your account, in this case, it's recommended to add other relevant exchange tag under your post to solve your issue better.

If your issue has any update, please feel free to post back :)
Daniel Kaliel 1,236 Reputation points

2021-06-30T19:27:57.48+00:00

It returns the same results in outlook.office365.com where it shows emails from 6:00pm the previous day to 6:00pm of the date requested. I'll add additional tags.
Daniel Kaliel 1,236 Reputation points

2021-06-30T19:30:29.547+00:00

IAll the research I have done points to this being on the client end not the server end but outlook.office365.com and Outlook desktop application both have the same search results. I have verified that in OWA the timezone is correct as well.
Jade Liang-MSFT 9,956 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-07-01T01:25:43.643+00:00

Hi @Daniel Kaliel ,
Thanks for your upfate, due to the issue could be reproduced on owa, the issue may be more related to your account, I have added exchange online tag under your post, hope your issue would be resolved soon :)

1 answer

Joyce Shen - MSFT 16,646 Reputation points

2021-07-01T08:09:21.637+00:00

Hi @Daniel Kaliel

According to my test, O365 search uses UTC time. For example, in my timezone (UTC+8), If I search the messages received on a specific date, I would get result from 8AM to the next day's 8AM. This seems to be by design and cannot be changed. Even if we have changed all the timezone for our account.

Here is another thread discussed about the similar issue: Change time zone in Admin Center

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Joyce Shen - MSFT 16,646 Reputation points

2021-07-05T08:55:25.813+00:00

Hi @Daniel Kaliel

Any update here?

Daniel Kaliel 1,236 Reputation points

2021-07-05T15:28:29.623+00:00

No update. The issue remains and their does not appear to be anyway to change it. It makes sense that the Exchange servers (online or on-prem) would use UTC 00:00 and rely on the client it apply the time zone based on its own location.

BUT, Outlook searching with Exchange Online appears to not apply the time zone set within the Outlook application. This is also the case with OWA with Exchange Online, it does not apply the time zone set by the user within their OWA. So searching in either, when looking for a certain time period, effectively fails.

Joyce Shen - MSFT 16,646 Reputation points

2021-07-08T07:05:17.743+00:00

Hi，

Yes, that's the behavior we see. I would suggest you feedback this question by openning a Service Request in O365.

Open a ticket via Admin portal. Detailed information here: Get support

Eg. The following is how to contact M365 support in the admin portal:

Daniel Kaliel 1,236 Reputation points

2021-07-09T17:49:25.553+00:00

II've done this. I'll post the results.

Daniel Kaliel 1,236 Reputation points

2021-07-09T18:48:27.193+00:00

Microsoft stated this is by design, although a poor design choice.

The recommended that I use the feedback option to request a feature change to adjust this.

Joyce Shen - MSFT 16,646 Reputation points

2021-07-14T05:54:07.497+00:00

Hi

Thanks for sharing the update, that might be the best choice!

KeithS 1 Reputation point

2022-05-12T15:22:20.847+00:00

I have found a workaround which is to add an offset to the date when searching. For example if your time zone is UTC+8 you could write received:04-30-2022+0800 in your search or even received:04-30-2022+8 will work.
@Daniel Kaliel , do you have the communication from Microsoft where they stated this is by design?

If it is by design, Microsoft should update their documentation as currently there is no mention about the ability to add an offset to date searches https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-search-in-outlook-d824d1e9-a255-4c8a-8553-276fb895a8da
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