Phone driving me mad - searching outlook emails and calendar - help!

[bellac11]

I have a Samsung phone, not entirely sure which one. I am utterly clueless about tech and wont be describing things correctly when I explain the problem

I use a laptop largely (Im on this now). I cant use a phone that easily due to disabilities in my hands but obviously I have it for when Im away from home.

I constantly forget appointment times etc and need a way for the phone to remind me what times these are.

I have emails set up on the phone but over the years the functionality of them has been worse and worse. For example, if I search in emails on my phone, in outlook, it will come up with no results, for ANYTHING, which I find incredible.

If I put things in my outlook calendar on this laptop, which takes an age, if I go into my outlook calendar on the phone, nothing is there. I need it to be set up like my work calendar, also outlook, which comes up with reminder when the appointment time is coming up.

There is a separate 'calendar' on the phone but its such a faff for me to put in appointments on 3 separate calendars (including work) I need a way to put my phone and personal laptop together so it reduces all this. Am I doing something wrong?

Also is there any way of improving how my email searches on my phone, I dont understand how nothing is ever found.

I can't help as I find the same. Search function in outlook is utterly abysmal. Add to calendar does absolutely nothing! It claims it's added but it isn't there.

I'm lucky in that I don't need to use it that much, just for personal stuff rather than work which is always laptop-based

I'd try a totally different set up if you rely on it a lot. Gmail? DH uses that and seems happy.

Thanks, well it might be time for me to change the phone anyway, I think its about 4 or 5 years old now, or thereabouts, but I dont know if its the phone or the software. Its my personal phone not work, never even use a work mobile phone.

I noticed yesterday after faffing about that when I tried to add an appointment to the outlook calendar on the phone it says Im not able to. So the calendar Ive added the appointments to on the phone is not the outlook one, just the phone calendar. Thing is I can touch type still so I prefer to use a laptop, but I dont have the strength or control to type using a phone, its a bit odd, but its easier to put things in the laptop.

To find out what kind of Samsung phone you have go to
1 SETTINGS
2 Click on the top bar which shows your name and email
3 Click on DEVICES
you will see which devices you are synced to
4 one line will be THIS DEVICE which gives model number etc

Once you have that info you can start googling solutions about synchronising outlook & outlook calendar on your model of phone.
(Can't help further as I use gmail)

Well apparently the phone doesnt support the outlook calendar, or something like that, I did it yesterday to try to put something in and it came up with that message. I will have to have another look later today.

I don't know if it's the phone, I have a very shiny new Samsung (s23) and I can't get outlook to function particularly well on it. Could be user error though

I'd advise using Gmail and the Google calender. As it's Web based, it's easy to switch between your phone and laptop, you just sign in, and you can stay signed in. For outlook, you may need a Microsoft 365 account where you pay for the office suite of software which includes outlook.