New interface office.com: powerful search function has gone?

Question

Last weekend the interface for MS 365/office.com has been changed (Educational license for our university).

I really miss the search field in the bleu old title bar: a very strong search functionality for finding files in Onedrive. Teams, Sharepoint, news, people etc.

OK, in Edge I can use the search functionality of Bing by using the search button in the right vertical bar. But is not as easy as it was before.

And what about users who prefer other browsers than Edge, they don't have the Bing search button.

Am I wrong or is there a powerful search function in the new interface that I did not find yet?

I hope someone can help me.

Kind Regards.

Answer 1

Dear Mia,

good news. De bleu title bar with Search function and profile area is after one week back again at office.com. I don't know if our IT department did some action, it is weekend know. Or maybe it was a known issue at Microsoft and they repaired it.

Kind Regards,

Karel Roos

Answer 2

Dear Mia,

thank you so much for your time and advice. I'll escalate this issue to our University IT department so they can take action and follow up your device.

Kind Regards,

Karel

Answer 3

Hi,

Thanks for posting back and the shared screenshots made the scenario clearly.

It seems more like a loading issue as even the profile section usually on the top-right corner is also missing, including the Feedback, Settings and Help.

However, it seems like many users in your tenant are facing the same issue which I believe it happens across various browsers. And so I check in Microsoft Service Health Dashboard (SHD) just now and it seems like currently there shows no related Search feature SI.

For such a situation, the efficient way is to open a support ticket to contact the escalated online support team where engineers there will make remote session with you or your team and collect HAR logs to locate the cause why this happening across the tenant users. They may also involve more resources to investigate the issue from the backend. Reference: Get support - Microsoft 365 admin | Microsoft Learn Please note it requires the admin account to open a free 365 support ticket: How do I find my Microsoft 365 administrator? - Microsoft Support

Please let me know if I made any misunderstanding or there have anything else I can do for you.

Your understanding and patience will be greatly appreciated. I hope you stay safe and healthy!

Sincerely,  

Mia | Microsoft Community Moderator

Answer 4

Dear Mia,

thanks for your reply, In your image the Seach field is available, in our situation we don't have that Search-field over there.

Before last weekend we (all my colleages and I) all had this...so far so good. We loved that Search field and its powerful functionality

After last weekend we have this...

Answer 5

Dear respected Karel1012,

Good day! Thanks for posting in our community.

We went through your post carefully and deployed some tests with a Microsoft 365 educational account and search with keyword from www.office.com portal. As we are not sure if this is what you are facing of the search feature change or we failed to reproduce a same interface on our machines, to offer you the correct guide to resolve this, could you please share us some more details as troubleshooting steps below?

1. If you are seeing a different interface as below? If so, please share some more screenshots for better understanding your scenario.

2. In case there has any related feature update is releasing gradually from tenants to tenants, please confirm with other users in your organization to see if they will see the same search interface as yours.
3. If other students are seeing the same change, please confirm with school IT department if they have made any customized setting for Microsoft Search. Reference: Manage search verticals | Microsoft Learn

We appreciate your kind patience and understanding that sometime the initial reply may not resolve the concern immediately or there may have some misunderstanding about your scenario, but we would like to hear the updates from your side and let's figure out the further suggestions.

We'll be here for you to wait for your updates. I appreciate your time and effort on checking these above and thank you for your time and cooperation. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Mia | Microsoft Community Moderator