Restore Search Companion for specific folders?

Question

Is there a way to restore the search companion for specific folders.  For folder's that aren't indexed, if I click the Search button in Windows Explorer it shows the Windows Desktop Search pane which proceeds to tell me "This folder is not index" and to use the Search Companion.  Clicking the Search Companion link in that note then opens a new explorer with the Search Companion pane open.

 

This is really annoying.  Why should I have to open another Explorer, losing my navigation history, just to search a folder.  If Windows Desktop Search won't work for a particular directory it shouldn't be shown why I click the Search button in Windows Explorer!

 

It's enough to make me want to uninstall Desktop Search and Outlook 2007 and return it.

Answer 1

 

No, you can't enable it for specific. The current Explorer architecture does not allow that functionality. The only option is to permanently disable the WDS pane and always use Search Companion.

Answer 2

 

Thanks, that helped me track down HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Desktop Search\DS\ShowStartSearchBand and to set it to 0 to disable the pane.

Answer 3

I did stumble accross a way to allow both behaviors -> In the MS Explorer window clicking the Search button once opens the new "Windows desktop Search" but clicking the Search button again changes the search tool to "search companion" without opening a new window. Clicking the search button again switches back and so on.

     Still there is no way I know of to right click on a folder and open "search companion" directly

Answer 4

The toggling by clciking on the search button did not work for me - anyone else see this toggling?

 

Answer 5

I have WDS 4.0 and would like to use the search companion for local file searches and continue to use WDS for email.
The recommendation seems to be to set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Desktop Search\DS\ShowStartSearchBand to 0. Unfortunately this key doesn't exist on my machine. I can also verify I am looking at HKCU no HKLM.

Answer 6

Great. Now do you have a solution for those of us who aren't IT professionals?