Policies for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
Applies To: Windows Server 2008
This section outlines all the policy settings that are available for Windows Desktop Search 3.01 on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The policies are listed in the same order as in the Administrative template file (.adm):
Prevent indexing when running on battery power to conserve energy
Prevent customizing indexed locations in the Control Panel
Allow using diacritics (also in Vista)
Prevent displaying advanced indexing options in Control Panel (also in Vista)
Prevent Indexing uncached Exchange folders (also in Vista)
Prevent Indexing Microsoft Office Outlook (also in Vista)
Prevent indexing e-mail attachments (also in Vista)
Control Rich Previews for Attachments
Prevent indexing public folders (also in Vista)
Indexer data location (also in Vista)
Add Primary Intranet Search Location
Add Secondary Intranet Search Locations
Preview Pane location
Set Large or Small Icon View in Desktop Search Results
Stop Indexing on Limited Hard Drive Space
Prevent Unwanted IFilters and Protocol Handlers
Do not allow web search
Prevent Indexing Certain Paths
Default Indexed Paths
Default Excluded Paths
Prevent Indexing of Certain File Types
Prevent indexing when running on battery power to conserve energy
If enabled, the indexer pauses when the computer is running on battery. If disabled, the indexing follows the default behavior.
Note
On Windows Vista, the indexer automatically backs off on low power.
Default configuration: disabled
Prevent customizing indexed locations in the Control Panel
If enabled, end users cannot open the Modify Locations dialog from the Search and Indexing Options Control Panel.
Default configuration: disabled
Allow using diacritics
If enabled, words that differ only in diacritics (accent marks) are treated as different words. If you do not configure this policy setting, WDS respects the local setting configured in Control Panel (the default is to treat these words as the same word).
Default configuration: no default
Prevent displaying advanced indexing options in Control Panel
If enabled, users cannot open the Advanced Options dialog from the Search and Indexing Options Control Panel.
Default configuration: disabled
Prevent Indexing uncached Exchange folders
If enabled, mail items on a Microsoft Exchange Server are not indexed when Microsoft Outlook is run in uncached mode. The default behavior for WDS 3.01 is not to index uncached Exchange folders.
Note
To index uncached Exchange items, this policy must be disabled. Versions of Outlook prior to 2003 do not support cached mode and so only local items such as PST files are indexed if this policy is enabled or left unconfigured.
Default configuration: no default
Prevent Indexing Microsoft Office Outlook
If enabled, WDS does not index any Microsoft Outlook items: the user’s Outlook items are not be added to the index, and the user cannot see them in search results. The default behavior is to automatically index Outlook items.
Default configuration: no default
Prevent indexing e-mail attachments
If enabled, WDS does not index the content of e-mail attachments. Other indexing service components (including the ones from 3rd parties) are expected not to index e-mail attachments.
Note
Consider enabling this policy if you are concerned about the security or indexing performance of 3rd party document filters (IFilters).
Default configuration: disabled
Control Rich Previews for Attachments
A semi-colon delimited list of file extension is created to allow rich attachment previews. When this policy is disabled or not configured, the default settings will be set to .bmp; .emf; .gif; .jpg; .jpeg; .png; .wmf.
Default configuration: .bmp; .emf; .gif; .jpg; .jpeg; .png; .wmf.
Prevent indexing public folders
If enabled, WDS does not index public folders in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or later. When this policy is disabled or not configured, the user has the option to index cached public folders in Outlook.
Other requirements: The user must be running in cached mode, with Outlook 2003 or later, and the Download Public Folder Favorites option must be turned on.
Default configuration: No default
Indexer data location
This policy identifies the directory the indexer database is stored in. This directory must be location on a local fixed drive.
Default configuration: %systemdrive%\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Search\Data\
Add Primary Intranet Search Location
This policy lets you add a primary intranet search location within WDS. The value of this text should be:
name,url
You must provide the following:
A name for the scope, such as “Intranet”.
The URL to the search service. Use $w in place of the query term for the search service URL.
If your intranet search service is SharePoint Portal Server, your scope should resemble the following:
SPPS,https://sitename/Search.aspx?k=$w
If your intranet search service is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the scope should resemble the following:
WSS,https://sitename/_layouts/XXXX/searchresults.aspx?SearchString=$w
Note
Replace the XXXX placeholder with the locale ID of your WSS intranet search service. For example, the English locale ID is 1033
Configuring this policy adds the intranet search location to the following:
Windows Deskbar
Desktop Search results search box
WDS search box in Search Companion
Default configuration: No default
Add Secondary Intranet Search Locations
If enabled, you can add other intranet search locations along with the primary intranet search location defined in the Add Primary Intranet Search Location policy. The value of this text should resemble the following:
name1,url1;name2,url2;...nameN,urlN
Examples:
Intranet,https://intranetsearch.aspx?k=$w
MySearch,https://mysearch.aspx?q=$w;MySearch2,https://mysearch2?q=$w
Note
Do not add spaces after the comma between the name and the URL or your URL will be invalid.
For each search scope, provide:
A name for the scope, such as “IT Web.”
The URL to the search service. Use $w in place of the query term for the search service URL.
If your intranet search service is SharePoint Portal Server, your scope should resemble the following:
https://sitename/Search.aspx?k=$w
If your intranet search service is Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), the scope should resemble the following:
https://sitename/_layouts/XXXX/searchresults.aspx?SearchString=$w
Note
Replace the XXXX placeholder with the locale ID of your WSS intranet search service. For example, the English locale ID is 1033.
Enabling this policy adds the secondary intranet locations to the following:
The All Locations list in the Desktop Search results.
The WDS search box in Search Companion.
Default configuration: No default
Preview Pane location
If configured, WDS displays the preview pane as you specify:
Auto
Right
Bottom
Off
You should consider turning off the preview pane if your environment does not support Office XP or later because the full preview pane functionality is only available for Office documents in Office XP or later.
When this policy is disabled or not configured, the preview pane is displayed to the right of the Desktop Search results. Users can change the location of the preview pane.
Default configuration: no default
Set Large or Small Icon View in Desktop Search Results
If configured, you can specify whether WDS displays large or small icons in the results view. The two options are:
Large Icon
Small Icon
If you have disabled the preview pane because your organization does not support Office XP or later versions of Office, you should enforce the large icon view so that users can see snippets related to their desktop search query.
When this policy is disabled or not configured, the default view is the small icon view.
Default configuration: no default
Stop Indexing on Limited Hard Drive Space
If enabled, WDS stops indexing when less than the specified amount of hard disk space remains on the disk on which the index is located. Specify between 0 and 2147483647 MB. When this policy is disabled or not configured, WDS automatically manages your index size.
Enable this policy if computers in your environment have extremely limited hard disk space.
Note
Indexing status does not indicate that indexing has stopped due to the enforcement of this policy.
Default configuration: no default
Prevent Unwanted IFilters and Protocol Handlers
If enabled, WDS does not use filters or protocol handlers unless they are specified in the "allow" list. However, this policy does not prevent filters or protocol handlers from being installed, nor will it prevent them from being used by other applications or services.
You can also specify an allow list of add-ins by providing the classID or ProgId string. For example, if you plan to deploy a particular IFilter, make sure that this IFilter is on the allow list, either as a GUID such as "{xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx}" (include the braces) or a COM ProgID such as "VisFilter.CFilter.1".
If you maintain a locked desktop environment, this setting is redundant because non-administrative users do not have permission to install new components. If your users have Administrator permissions or can install software, this policy prevents WDS from using add-ins users install.
Note
Because of a limitation in the Group Policy Editor, you must add at least one entry in the allow list. To enable this policy without an allow list, put a space in the name field and a space in the value field and then save it. This will create a placeholder entry that is ignored by the program.
Default configuration: no default
Do not allow web search
If enabled, users cannot search the Web from WDS. When this policy is disabled or not configured, the Web option is available and users can search the Web via their default browser search engine.
Default configuration: no default
Prevent Indexing Certain Paths
If enabled, WDS does not index the paths you specify. The user cannot enter any path that starts with one of the paths you specified.
If you enable and then disable this policy, users can index any path not restricted by other policies, but their original list of paths to index is not restored.
The format of the paths URLs are:
Protocol://site/path/file
An example of a local machine path is file:///C:\*
An example of a network share is otfs://{*}\server\path\*
Note
Both default inclusion and exclusion path policies have the following restrictions:
Path URLs have a 256-character limit. If the 256 character limit is exceeded, any paths specified after the long path will be ignored.
“*” should always be used after any path is specified to denote all possible paths under the given location.
Any path specified in group policy will show up in the indexing UI, even if it is an invalid path.
To prevent indexing of Outlook Express, you need to add an entry in this policy for outlookexpress://{*}/*
Default configuration: no default
Default Indexed Paths
If enabled, WDS indexes the paths you specify by default. The user may override this default and exclude them from indexing.
The format of the paths URLs are:
Protocol://site/path/file
An example of a local machine path is file:///C:\*
An example of a network share is:
otfs://{*}/<servername>/<path>/*
otfs://localhost/<drive>/<path>/*
Note
The <drive> segment should be specified as “c” not “c:\”. You would only use this with a local drive if it were a FAT drive instead of NTFS.
When redirecting MyDocs locally to a second hard drive (for example, D:\MyDocs), administrators should add the path using this policy setting to ensure the redirected content is indexed.
Default configuration: no default
Default Excluded Paths
If enabled, WDS does not index the paths you specify. The user may override this default and include the paths in indexing.
The format of the path URLs are:
Protocol://site/path/file
An example of a local machine path is file:///C:\*
An example of a network share is ofts://{*}/server/path/*
Default configuration: no default
Prevent Indexing of Certain File Types
If enabled, WDS does not index the file types you specify (end users cannot modify this list). You should separate each extension type with a semicolon. When this policy is disabled or not configured, the user can edit the default list of excluded file types.
Note
Limitations of the Group Policy Object Editor require this list to be split across multiple values. WDS combines all these into a single exclusion list.
If you enable and then disable this policy, the user’s original list is restored. Also, enabling the policy does not affect the list of file types displayed in the advanced Control Panel. Selecting a disabled file type, however, will have no effect. Usually, this policy is deployed in conjunction with the Prevent displaying advanced indexing options in the Control Panel policy.
Default configuration: no default