What I find is that the auto search finds any contact whose name or email address contains whatever letters I've typed in the 'To' field. So if I type 'ch', I'll get 'Chris Worf', 'Jean-Luc Chow' & '[email protected]' for example. The list that comes up is scrollable but only a couple of entries are visible in the initial display. Keep typing & eventually something recognizable comes up. I've never had it flat out not find a contact that I know is there.