Announcing the Windows Search 4.0 Preview

To search for files on my PCs, I use Windows Search - Windows Vista's desktop search feature. I use Windows Search specifically to find photos that I've tagged in Windows Live Photo Gallery or important emails and Word documents. I also rely on saving specific searches that I can go back to later on. Searching and being able to find important files quickly on my PC is very important to me.  And Windows Search allows me to "find my stuff" whenever I need to. Today we get to see a little "preview" of the next step for Windows Search. The Windows Search Team is making available Windows Search 4.0 Preview - a preview of the next version of desktop search for Windows.

Windows Search 4.0 introduces several improvements I'd like to call out making search even better in Windows Vista:

  • With Windows Search 4.0, the Windows Search Team has fixed most of the reported bugs causing a majority of distractions users have seen since Windows Vista RTM - many of those bugs were reported by you.
  • Great improvements have been made with regards to performance.Even now as Preview, Windows Search 4.0 has query response time about 33%faster than search queries in Windows Vista RTM.
  • The Windows Search Team has extended Remote Index Discovery for PC-to-PC search to work onevery supported version of Windows. This makes finding information on other PCs running Windows Search 4.0 quick and less resource-consuming. Now Windows Search can find information shared on a remote PC by accessing an index on that PC - and you will open files only when relevant to your search. This will also work if the user's profile is redirected.
  • The Windows Search Team has implemented Rollback Recovery where your search index will roll back to the last known good state (this is good in handling disc write errors). If an error occurs, your index isn't rebuilt from scratch; only the newly changed files are added to the index, making recovery from system errors not as disruptive to the machine or the user

 Being able to find files isn't just important to consumers - it is also important to IT Professionals managing enterprise environments. The Windows Search Team has made some improvements in Windows Search 4.0 that IT Professionals should take note of:

  • We have improved performance when indexing Exchange in online mode, sending fewer packets and making less RPC calls. In this process we apply significantly less load on the Exchange server too.
  • Support for Group Policy settings is extended and improved; per-user policy is supported now.
  • We now support EFS - Windows Search 4.0 will index encrypted files, and user can search for them in the sane UI and through the same user experience as seen with regular, unencrypted files.

IT Professionals can expect a smooth deployment for Windows Search 4.0 and easier support.

With Windows Search 4.0, the Windows Search Team has taken the next step in improving the PC search experience in Windows. To download and check out the Windows Search 4.0 Preview yourself, click here. I encourage folks to try out the Windows Search 4.0 Preview and let us know what you think!

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Comments

  1. DaytonaDave
    Posted on: April 01, 2008 at 11:34AM  

    I have successfully installed the Adobe x64 PDF IFilter, and it shows in File Types as 'PDFFilterShim (x64) Class', but the contents of my PDFs do not seem to get indexed.

    I have done a rebuild.  Anyone else seeing this issue?

  2. miket
    Posted on: April 01, 2008 at 12:22PM  

    I've just installed the update.  The first search test was promising -- searching through text files for a keyword gave the exact same results as a search in Windows 2003 Server.

  3. someone
    Posted on: April 01, 2008 at 4:50PM  

    Hey Dave Wood and Brandon, according to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/overview/featurecompare.mspx, Outlook 2003 is not supported in Vista search. So this version won't too right? I thought MS supported at least the latest version and the one before it.

  4. BobWells
    Posted on: April 01, 2008 at 5:38PM  

    IU'll ask this wuestions again since:

    1. It's been asked at least three times now in this thread

    2. Brandon has answered other posters.

    3. It doesn't work for me at all, even though others on this board claim it does.

    4. The Search website explicitly shows it NOT being supported.

    5. Outlook 2003 is, by far, the most popular Exchange client on the market today.

    Sorry, for the repeat, but these forums are frustrating.

    It appears many people post questions and then a few cherry-picked ones are answered but Brandon while the rest of us are left wondering.

    I need a definiative answer...does Windows Search 4.x support Outlook 2003 clients. If not, then I'm afraid MS really, honestly, truely, can't do anything right with search at this point. It doesn't matter how cool the tool is, if it doesn't support the common platforms in use today for MS's flagship enterprise communication platform (namely Exchange/Outlook/Office).

    If it does work, then my appologies for misunderstanding. Could you please tell me HOW to turn this feature ON, so I can begin enjoying the greatness of Search 4.0!

    :)

    Thank you and have a great day.

  5. Brandon LeBlanc
    Microsoft
    Posted on: April 01, 2008 at 7:02PM  

    BobWells, I do not "cherry pick" which comments to respond to ;-) I respond to the ones I have the answers to. I am looking into your question about Outlook 2003 and will post again when I have a answer. However, Dave Wood has indicated above that Outlook 2003 was never "dropped" - Dave works on the Windows Search Team so I am checking with him on clarifacation.

    Thanks,

    Brandon

  6. davewood
    Posted on: April 02, 2008 at 12:51PM  

    Hi Bob {and "someone"},

    Windows Search 4 very much supports indexing and search of Outlook XP, Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. This is both on XP and Vista. Earlier releases like Windows Desktop Search 3 and the built-in Vista search also support the exact same Outlook versions, so nothing has changed here.

    The link is referring to the Windows Live toolbar, which is a separate release. This release does include a UI-plug-in to Outlook to support searching. It's possible this plug-in doesn't run on Vista - I'll have to check. But even so, you can still search for emails through the Vista start menu {just hit the Windows key and start typing}, or from a Vista search window. I spend much of the last two years working on this feature {using Outlook 2003} - it really is supported.

    So if this isn't working can I ask you a couple of clarifying questions:

    - Are you running Vista or XP?

    - Do you see e-mail search results from either the Vista start menu or XP Windows Search window?

    - If you go to the Indexing Options control panel do you see "Microsoft Office Outlook" listed as an item being indexed?

    - If you click Modify and expand the Outlook node do you see a list of your mail stores and PSTs which are being indexed?

    If something isn't working somewhere let's see if we can track it down ...

    Dave

  7. Bob Doyle
    Posted on: April 02, 2008 at 8:39PM  

    Dave Wood,

    I am running Vista Enterprise SP1. I am also running Office 2007 Pro SP1.

    Yes, I see e-mail search results from the Vista Start Menu.

    Yes, I see MIcrosoft Office Outlook as an item being indexed.

    Yes, I see my two PSTs being indexed when I click Modify and expand the node.

    Thank you for following up with me on this.

    Bob

  8. dreamis@live
    Posted on: April 07, 2008 at 6:22AM  

    Thanks for the great news. I am keenly love the new search features that come shipped with various MSFT products now and for sure the best thing I love is search feature within OneNote 2007. Imagine how disappointing it comes when after upgrading the WDS 3 to WDS 4 Preview the search feature in OneNote has scewed up... Specifically, I can't search everywhere but within the active Onenote's note. That is I simply can't search through all the gazillion of notes I have in my OneNote since the search is now limiting me to search within the scope for only that the note that is currently selected in OneNote main window! This behavior makes the  search feature completely useless...

    Yes, the Search scope is set to All Notebooks on the Page List side-bar.

    I would really appreciate any help on this.

    Thank you.

    Thank you.

  9. alison
    Posted on: April 08, 2008 at 7:45AM  

    This is a desperate plea: Windows Vista does NOT find files which are there (in the same folder as others it does find, so it must be an indexed location). What is the use of this? How can one fix it? At the end of every day I was in the habit of searching for files modified that day in order to back them up. This is now a pointless exercise as some files aren't found.

  10. MichelleA [msft...
    Posted on: April 10, 2008 at 3:57PM  

    Hey Cas - to your question of the GPO template - the WS4 installation places the templates automatically (Search.admx for Windows Vista and Search.adm for Windows XP) as follows: in Windows Vista in C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions folder. In Windows XP, it is located in the C:\Windows\inf folder. You can navigate directly to gpedit.msc and open up Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search.

    Thanks

Trackbacks

  1. Posted by: Techy News » Announcing the Windows Search 4.0 Preview on March 27, 2008 at 7:00PM
  2. Posted by: Student Union on March 28, 2008 at 10:19AM
  3. Posted by: Mirrored Blogs on March 28, 2008 at 10:55AM

    Announcing the Windows Search 4.0 Preview Vista Team Blog Download Mark Harrison

  4. Posted by: Paul Mooney on March 28, 2008 at 11:31AM

    Announcing the Windows Search 4.0 PreviewAre we there yet? Just after the release of Windows Vista SP1...

  5. Posted by: The blog of Rob Margel on March 28, 2008 at 12:44PM

    Nick over on the Windows Vista Blog has put up an article describing what is available in the preview

  6. Posted by: OpsanBlog on March 31, 2008 at 12:38AM
  7. Posted by: infoworld.com on March 31, 2008 at 7:18PM

    Microsoft has released a preview of an update to its Windows desktop-search tool to clear out bugs and

  8. Posted by: David Overton's Blog on April 03, 2008 at 6:06PM

    There is a feature that I 1st found of Windows Home Server that can be applied to SBS, Windows Server

  9. Posted by: iMàtica España y Latinoamérica on April 05, 2008 at 3:13AM

    La versión beta incluye una funcionalidad que permite buscar documentos en otras computadoras de una red local siempre y cuando estas también dispongan de Windows Search 4 instalado....

  10. Posted by: Arshad's Blog for Partners on April 10, 2008 at 10:44AM

    On Thursday, March 27, Microsoft announced the availability of the Windows Search 4.0 (WS4.0) Preview

  11. Posted by: The Windows Experience Blog on April 11, 2008 at 2:56AM

    Brandon Paddock, who works on the Windows Shell Team here at Microsoft, wrote a Windows Sidebar Gadget

  12. Posted by: Site d'informations sur Windows Vista et Windows Server 2008 on April 11, 2008 at 10:35AM

    La beta de Windows Search 4.0 est disponible Tous les détails sont ici : http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=940157

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