The first time I installed Microsoft Desktop Search I think it was called "MSN Desktop Search". It was a bit confusing because if you wanted to have the same "Lookout" type funcationality in Microsoft outlook you had to install the MSN Toolbar (or LIVE toolbar as Microsoft was in the process of rebranding everything to LIVE).
My favoriate version of Windows Desktop Search was:
Windows Desktop Search - 02.06.6000.5414 or Windows Desktop Search 2.6.6
You used to be able to get that by right clicking on the small Windows Desktop Search icon HELP -> About Windows Desktop Search
Overall, 2.06.6000.5414 was a great product and I would have been happy if Microsoft would have just left things alone. Some of the features I "loved" were:
- Searchable Index of Microsoft Outlook Mailbox and .pst files
Searchable Index of local disk drives and Network Shares or UNC paths
- CLICK ON BROWSE
- From here you have VERY granular control of what to index. I LOVE IT!!!
Another great feature I like was inside of outlook. Once I typed in a search and I received back my results, I could Right - Click on an email and select Conversation
This would bring back all emails in that conversation. This is a feature I used ALL THE TIME!
So, everything came to a screaching halt when Microsoft Office 2007 was released. All in all, I really like it however as a corporate user, Outlook is the application I spend 80% of my day using. I figured, ok I'll go ahead and bite the bullet and upgrade to the new Office. My company notebook didn't have the CPU requirements for VISTA so my new configuration is:
Windows XP sp2
Office 2007 Enterprise Edition
After the upgrade, the first thing I tried out was the desktop search....... Unfortunatly, Outlook 2007 told me I needed to upgrade to the new Windows Desktop Search 3.0 if I wanted to enjoy the benefits of having all my email and .pst files indexed.
So, I went to the Microsoft download page and downloaded WDS 3.0 RTW or KB917013 and downloaded the Windows Desktop Search 3.0 upgrade.
After the install I had to reboot a few times and rebuild my index. The first thing I did was go into the Windows Desktop Search Options.
The first thing I noticed was all the options were gone. I no longer had the ability to configure Windows Desktop Search at a granular level. All the UNC features were gone, all the Microsoft Outlook features were gone (Selecting .PST files etc....)
Here, see for yourself:
Right click on the Windows Desktop Search Icon on the Toolbar. Click Windows Desktop Search Options...
As you can see, all the granular options are GONE. If you click on MODIFY or ADVANCED, you have a VERY limited set of thing you can configure:
MODIFY
ADVANCED
If you click on File Types if you want to configure which extensions you want indexed.
As you can see, not much you can configure here....
So that takes us to the Outlook 2007 configuration:
Once you get into the options, everything is pretty much the same as 2.6.6 however one IMPORTANT feature is missing.....
NO CONVERSATION SEARCH OPTION!!!
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