WDS 3.0 - searching intranet sites, mapped My Documents

WDS 3.0 - searching intranet sites, mapped My Documents

• moh hassan

  mh8759,

  In order to search network shares using WDS 3.0 you need to install the UNC/FAT protocol handler. You can download and install the protocol handler here:

  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx FamilyID=f7e981d9-5a3b-4872-a07e-220761e27283&DisplayLang=en

  Paul Nystrom - MSFT

  
  
  

• tkeller01

  I agree completely... when I installed WDS 3.0 with Office 2007, I was shocked that I could not index my network drives and network My Documents. To top it off, the help file included with the software and on the website both say you can index network drives... so it seems there might have been some disconnect between the documentation team/plan/final software. If I hadn't found this thread with the plugin, I would have basically deemed WDS useless beyond Outlook.
  

• claudio32

  While redirected "My Documents" folders is a good thing to enable searches on, having large numbers of users indexing a common Shared Drive could bring that server to its knees, performance-wise. Think about the number of users, etc. before delpoying this as an administrator. Unfortunately using a search server, such as MOSS 2007 or WSS 3 is no longer supported by WDS, otherwise this would be a good solution for allowing users to search an indexed shared network drive.
  

• antcasq

  No, it should be a feature of the the software, not an add-in. Mapped drives and re-directed folders are not only listed as a "Best Practice" by Microsoft but also quite common. Common enough that the programming team should have said "hey, we can't release WDS without this basic capability".
  
  To make matters worse, Microsoft goes and releases a new version of Office to great fanfare and with great features and of course wants as many people to pony up big dollars to upgrade. Great. So you install Office 2007 in an environment with redirected my document folders (a pretty common practice) and find out that Office needs WDS 3.0 to properly search in OneNote and Outlook. Ok, great - install WDS 3.0. It's then and only then that the user finds out "Sorry - out of luck. You can't search network drives with WDS as it shipped." But you really can search network drives - if you dig around enough to find a rather obscure add-in. So you install the add-in and then have to give it the proper UNC path to your My Documents directory which isn't difficult if you know what you're doing but to the average user this is an daunting task.
  
  No wonder IT departments are hesitant to adopt new software packages.
  
  

• enric vives

  You should make such an addin more obvious, more exposed for download.
  
• WDS 3.0 - searching intranet sites, mapped My Documents