Searching for a contact and then displaying the contact alphabetically in the list of contacts

[jmt356]

I am using Outlook in Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise. On one computer, when I search for a contact in Outlook, I get a series of contacts with the search term. If I select one of the contacts and then then press Esc while my cursor is in the search box, I get an alphabetical list of all my contacts with the contact selected. So, for example, if the contact is "Samuel," after I select Samuel and then press Esc while my cursor is in the search box, all my contacts display but with Samuel selected, so I see the contacts before and after Samuel displayed alphabetically.

However, when I do the same on a second computer, which is also running Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, when I press Esc, I come to the first contact in my list of contacts. The "Samuel" contact is no longer selected.

How can I get the second computer to behave like the first one?

[jmt356]

I know this question is obscure and might not make sense to everyone. Basically what I am asking is whether, after I search for a term and select it, Outlook can keep it selected when I clear the search instead of going to the very first Outlook item alphabetically. Outlook has always done this for me until I upgraded to a computer using Windows 11. I am not sure why this behavior is occurring since both computers are using Outlook in Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise so the behavior should be the same. The change has introduced a major inconvenience for me.

In this same vein, when I search for an email in my inbox and select and email and then clear the search, the selected email stays selected. This is the behavior that I want. I don't want Outlook to go to the first email in my list of emails and selected that one; I want the one I selected in the search to remain selected. And I want this same behavior to occur when I search for a contact in Contacts.