I have the same issue. Using Outlook v 16.55 from Apple Store on both Exchange and 365 account. Search stopped working after upgrade to macOS 12.1. All was great in 12.0.1.

Hi I just wanted to confirm I run into the same issue. When working from home I connect to company drives via VPN and work with excel files. Pre update to macOS Ventura last night I could easily work with an excel file and save it in a matter of 2-3 seconds. Now I get a spinning beach ball and at times I get the same text you mention above. Only able to recover the file by connecting to it from a PC and opening a previous version of it. I tried to connect from my wife's MacBook which still runs macOS Monterey and there are no issues. Upsetting as Ventura offers nothing to my workflow. Considering downgrading. Last year when I updated to Monterey, the search in Outlook was completely broken for months.