A new version of Microsoft’s indexing and search technology is now available. The Windows Search technology is one way to find documents and messages quickly. It’s essential to using the ‘instant’ search features in Outlook 2007 and Onenote 2007.
A new version of Microsoft’s indexing and search technology is now available. Windows Search version 4 (WS4) is available for Windows XP (SP2 or SP3), Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008, including Small Business Server 2003 and Home Server.
The Windows Search technology is one way to find documents and messages quickly. It’s essential for using the ‘instant’ search features in Outlook 2007 and Onenote 2007.
What’s New
Windows Search 4 has the usual claimed ‘performance and stability’ improvements though our informal tests didn’t show any noticeably faster indexing.
Encrypted files, such as password protected Word or Excel documents can be indexed by WS4.
Many of the new features in WS4 are good for corporate users and administrators. Administrators can control Windows Search with more and more consistent group policy settings. Outlook 2007 with Exchange Server can now be indexed more efficiently, especially when not in cached mode. Delegate mailboxes can now be indexed (this is OFF by default and is enabled via the Group Policy Editor).
Installation
Installation is simple, during the installation for Windows Vista it shows up as ‘Update for Windows (KB940157)’ but once installed it appears as ‘Windows Search 4’ in the list of installed Windows updates.
The Windows XP installer is clearer because it’s treated as a separate add-on to Windows rather than an obscure update with only a KB reference.
The setup requires a restart of your computer and, with no warning, your current index is removed and a new one created from scratch. Because the reindexing process can take many hours there should be a warning during the installation. This update should only be installed when you can leave the computer largely unattended for hours afterwards. Our test machine took over 6 hours to fully reindex over 130,000 items.
There’s still no ‘index now’ option – it passes understanding why Microsoft doesn’t have this simple feature. You can speed up the indexing with a messy registry hack – Force Windows Index to run faster.
There are separate downloads of Windows Search 4 for specific versions of Windows:
for Windows Vista SP1 and Server 2008 (32 bit)
for Windows Server 2003 SP2 incl. Home Server and Small Business Server 2003 (32 bit)
for Windows XP and Server 2003 (64 bit)
for Windows Vista and Server 2008 (64 bit)
What’s indexed
Windows Search 4 can index files either superficially (file name and some meta-data ‘tags’ only) or the ‘entire contents’ (see ‘More complete indexing’ below).
All the Microsoft Office document types (old and new 2007 ones) are indexed in WS4.
However you’d not know that from the online documentation at a web page called ‘Windows Search: Searchable File Types‘ which omits any reference to the Office 2007 document formats! Yet again, Microsoft is showing less than fulsome interest in their own document formats.
The obvious omission from Windows Search 4 is full Adobe Acrobat PDF support. Make sure that you have Adobe Acrobat version 7 or later installed before Windows Search. That will ensure that all your PDF files and attachments are fully indexed.
Encrypted files can be indexed with WS4 but be aware of the privacy issues in allowing that (the indexed document can be viewed in preview). Microsoft recommends that the entire hard drive be encrypted with their BitLocker feature. Turning on the encrypted files option will force an index rebuild with the delays that entails.
More complete indexing
A major limitation of Windows indexing in the past was that it did NOT index (or find text) from entire documents. If you have a long document like a contract, you would not find text lower down in the document. That’s despite Microsoft documentation which claims that Windows Search will index the ‘entire contents’ of certain documents.
Our standard test for this is a Word document and text file both with the text of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Then see if the desktop search product can find a phrase from the famous St Crispin’s Day speech (Act 4, Scene 3) – often they can’t.
It’s nice to see that Windows Search 4 passes the Henry V ‘Band of Brothers’ test.
However it’s not fully clear if entire documents are always indexed (regardless of size). This is an important point, especially for legal users, which should be clearly and completely documented.
How to Search
Once WS4 is installed and indexed you can search your files quickly from the Search option on the Start Menu
In Outlook 2007 and OneNote 2007 the in-built searches come from the Windows Search index.
Searching across the network
The Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 versions have the ability to index network shares (ie other computers or attached storage). Go to Indexing Options | Advanced | Add UNC Location.
This feature is supposedly available for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 and there’s a group policy setting to enable it. However we were unable to get this working in any of our machines.
Vista and Server 2008 will search across the network quickly but only if the remote machine is also indexed with Windows Search 4. That’s fine for Windows computers but no use for non-Windows servers, in particular Network Attached Storage devices.
Finding out which version of Windows Search you have isn’t easy. The cross network search features would be easier to manage with a simple way to discern WS4 enabled machines from others. The main control for the feature is via Control Panel | Indexing Options but doesn’t have any version information. You have to go over to the installation information (Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs in XP or Control Panel | Programs and Features | View installed updates in Vista ).
Windows Search 4 is probably better than its predecessors but it’s hard to tell. The user interface hasn’t changed in any useful way, despite the simple things that could have been done to make life easier for Microsoft’s customers. There seems to be a willful effort to ignore the innovations and improvements now common in rival desktop search products from the likes of Google and Copernic.
The documentation is very poor with mixed references and confusion between the version 4 release and earlier versions.
The list of supported file types is notably incomplete. The limitations and controls over indexing are either badly explained or entirely omitted. Rebuilding the indexing is unnecessarily time consuming.
In short, we can’t see any rush to install Windows Search 4. There’s nothing compelling in it for most Office 2007 users, unless the cursory documentation has some gems that have yet to come to light.
