Chapter 26 - Finding MS Office Documents on the Network

Article
02/20/2014

Archived content. No warranty is made as to technical accuracy. Content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist.

Overview

Office 97 for Windows includes two tools that help make Office documents on local or network drives easier for your workgroup to find: Find Fast and Web Find Fast. With both of these tools, the Find Fast indexing engine indexes Office documents, as well as other document types such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents. End users can then search this index file for specific words, phrases, or document properties.

Use Find Fast to index local or network drives (Windows only). Then users can search the indexes through the Open dialog box (File menu) of Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Office Binder, and Microsoft Project, or through the Find Items command (Tools menu) of Microsoft Outlook.
Use Web Find Fast to index shared folders or drives on Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation computers configured as Web servers. Then users can search the indexes through Web browsers on Windows or Macintosh client computers on your intranet.

Differences Between Find Fast and Web Find Fast

Depending on your workgroup's network environment, you may find both Find Fast and Web Find Fast to be useful. This section describes the architectural and administrator differences between the two tools.

Note In this section, the term Find Fast refers to searching through the Open dialog box (File menu) of Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Office Binder, and Microsoft Project, or through the Find Items command (Tools menu) of Outlook.

System Requirements

From an administrator's perspective, the main difference between Find Fast and Web Find Fast is the computer environment on which they run:

Indexing and searching with Find Fast work on any computer running the Windows 95 or Windows NT operating system.
Indexing with Web Find Fast requires a Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation computer configured as a Web server with software such as Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). Searching requires a Web browser on a Windows or Macintosh client computer. For more information about Web Find Fast system requirements, see "Supporting Web Find Fast" later in this chapter.

Note If you are using Windows NT Workstation, make sure you do not violate the connection license agreement with your HTTP server.

Index Structure

Both Find Fast and Web Find Fast make use of index files created by the Find Fast indexing engine. However, the two searching methods differ in other ways.

When users search for documents with Find Fast, they specify a default start location for the search. For example, in the following illustration, the folder My Documents is the default start location.

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Find Fast looks for an index file in the My Documents folder. If it does not find one there, it looks up the folder tree, all the way to the root of the drive. Find Fast uses any index file it finds in or above the default start location in the search.

Tip In the Advanced Find dialog box, you can specify more complex search criteria using AND and OR conditional values. To display the dialog box, click Open on the File menu of any Office application, and then click Advanced. For more information about using search criteria in the Advanced Find dialog box, see online Help.

If you select the Search subfolders check box in the Advanced Find dialog box, Find Fast also looks for index files down the folder tree, below the default start location of the search. In the following example, if the nested subfolder Market Testing had been indexed, Find Fast would use that index to speed up the search for that subfolder.

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Searching with Web Find Fast uses a different approach. In this case the user submits a search query from an HTML page (Query.htm, for example) in a Web browser on a client computer on the intranet, and Web Find Fast processes the query on a Web server computer. The query page is linked to a specific Find Fast index, and only that index is searched. You must specify the index on the query page by editing its HTML code in a text editor. For more information, see "Supporting Web Find Fast" later in this chapter.

Unlike an index created with Find Fast, a Web Find Fast index can include multiple disjointed folders or drives on the same Web server, plus additional shared folders or network drives on other computers on the network. You can think of a Web Find Fast index as consisting of at least two components: the base index component of the Web server on which the index file resides, and additional index components that cover additional shared folders or drives on the network.

As mentioned earlier, the formats of the index files used by Find Fast and Web Find Fast are identical. If Find Fast encounters an index created by Web Find Fast, Find Fast searches the base index component of that index file.

Accuracy of Index Search Results

Another distinction between Find Fast and Web Find Fast searches is that Find Fast results are potentially more accurate. Find Fast returns search results based on the index files it finds, but then performs an additional accuracy check. Find Fast compares the last modified date of the indexed documents as recorded in the index with the actual last modified dates of the documents. Wherever Find Fast finds differences in those dates, it performs a brute force search of the document in question (Find Fast compares the search criteria to the document content directly) and updates the search results if necessary.

Web Find Fast, on the other hand, relies solely on the index to which it is linked. If that index is out of date, the search results are similarly out of date.

User Interface

For the end user, the most obvious difference between Find Fast and Web Find Fast is the interface.

The user initiates a Find Fast search through the Open dialog box (File menu) of Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Office Binder, and Microsoft Project, or through the Find Items command (Tools menu) of Outlook.

If your browser does not support inline frames, click here to view on a separate page.
The user initiates a Web Find Fast search through an HTML query page in a Web browser.

If your browser does not support inline frames, click here to view on a separate page.

As mentioned earlier, each Web Find Fast query page is connected by HTML code to a specific Web Find Fast index on a Web server. If you index multiple Web servers, you can connect each index to a query page, or you can customize a singe query page so that users can select the index they want searched. For more information, see "Supporting Web Find Fast" later in this chapter.

Summary of Differences

The similarities and differences between these methods of finding documents are summarized in the following table.

Issue	Find Fast	Web Find Fast
Location of index	Local or network drive	Web server running on Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation.
Scope of indexing	A single index includes only folders in and below the location at which the index file itself resides on the local or network drive.	A single index includes not only folders in and below the location at which the index file itself resides on the Web server, but also other folders on the Web server or other network drives.
End-user interface	Open dialog box (File menu) of Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Office Binder, and Microsoft Project, or the Find Items command (Tools menu) of Outlook.	Query page in a Web browser.
Administrator interface	Find Fast control panel.	Find Fast NT control panel on the Web server; remote administration page in a Web browser.
Supports phrase searching	Yes.	Yes.
Supports searching by document properties	Yes.	Yes, as specified in the query page HTML code.
Supports relevance ranking	No.	Yes.
Requires Web server software such as Internet Information Server (IIS)	No.	Yes; for more information about system requirements, see "Supporting Web Find Fast" later in this chapter.

The remainder of this section describes issues that apply to both Find Fast and Web Find Fast.

What Types of Documents Can Be Indexed

You can specify the file types to be indexed only when you create an index. You cannot change the indexed file types for an existing index; you must delete the index, and then recreate it.

To specify the file types to be indexed

On the Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

– or –

In Windows NT Workstation version 3.51, double-click Control Panel in the Main group in Program Manager.
Double-click Find Fast.
On the Index menu, click Create Index.
Under In and Below, select the drive or folder that contains the documents you want indexed.

This location is also where the index files are stored.
In the Of type box, select the file types you want indexed.

When you specify the type of documents to be indexed in the Create Index dialog box, Find Fast includes the document types described in the following table.

This document type	Includes documents with these extensions
Office	All the Excel, PowerPoint, Microsoft Project, and Word document types listed in this table, plus binders and Access .odb, .obt, and .mdb documents (although only document properties in .mdb documents are indexed)
Excel	.xl* (workbooks)
PowerPoint	.PowerPoint (presentations), .pot (templates), .pps (auto-running presentations)
Microsoft Project	.mpp, .mpw, .mpt, .mpx, .mpd (Microsoft Project files)
Word	.doc (documents), .dot (templates), .ht* (HTML documents), .txt (text files), .rtf (Rich Text Format files)
All Files	.

Note When you select All Files in the Create Index dialog box, Find Fast does not index file types that do not have textual content, such as BMP, COM or EXE files. For more information about excluded file types, see "File Types That Are Not Indexed" later in this chapter.

In addition to the Office document types listed in the preceding table, Find Fast can index the following document types if their installed conversion filters support minimal RTF mode:

Lotus 1-2-3 version 2.x – 4.0
RFT-DCA
Microsoft Works version 3.x for Windows
Word version 4.x – 5.x for the Macintosh
Works version 4.0 for Windows
WordPerfect version 5.x
WordPerfect version 6.x
WordStar

You can determine whether the filters you have installed support minimal RTF mode by examining the Windows registry. In the registry, view the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Shared Tools\Text Converters\Import.

Each filter listed that includes a subkey named NoDialogs should support minimal RTF mode and therefore can be used by Find Fast.

Find Fast indexes other document types using its own internal text filters. In all cases, however, words more than 40 characters in length are not indexed.

File Types That Are Not Indexed

Some file types, such as applications (EXE) and pictures (BMP), do not contain meaningful words that Find Fast can index. These file types are referred to as excluded file types. Even if you specify to index all files when you create an index, Find Fast ignores files of the types that appear on its excluded file type list to minimize the size of the index files.

The following table lists the excluded file types.

These file types are not indexed by Find Fast

.386	.ffa	.olb
.acl	.ffl	.par
.act	.ffo	.pcs
.ani	.ffx	.pdb
.avi	.flt	.ps
.au	.fon	.pst
.bin	.gid	.scr
.bmp	.gif	.seq
.cab	.hlp	.sys
.cat	.icm	.tar
.cgm	.ico	.tif
.chk	.jpeg	.ttc
.com	.jpg	.ttf
.cnv	.lex	.url
.cpl	.map	.vbx
.cur	.mmf	.vxd
.dll	.mov	.wav
.drv	.nls	.wmf
.dic	.nsf	.xab
.eps	.obj	.z
.exe	.ocx	.zip

Note This list is for reference only; you cannot add to the list to prevent Find Fast from attempting to index additional file types.

Indexing FrontPage Webs

If you want to index a Web site created by FrontPage, you can prevent Find Fast from indexing the configuration folders that contain information about the Web site. These folders have names that begin with _vti or private. To prevent the indexing of these files, locate this registry path on the computer on which you installed Find Fast:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Shared Tools\Find Fast\97

To this key add the DWORD value ExcludeFPTemp and assign it any nonzero value.

Words That Are Not Indexed

Some words, such as and, of, and or, occur frequently in most documents. Because these words are of little value as search words, Find Fast does not index them. Words that are not indexed are referred to as stop words.

Stop words have no effect in searches. A search for the phrase the schedule is the same as a search for * and schedule, so Find Fast looks for any word and schedule. A search for "the schedule" (enclosed in quotation marks) has the same effect as the search for "anyword schedule": Find Fast looks for any word followed by schedule.

Tools and Utilities The Office Resource Kit Tools and Utilities include the complete list of stop words for all languages in the file Stopword.doc. For more information, see "Find Fast Stop Word List" in Appendix A, "Microsoft Office Resource Kit Tools and Utilities." Note that this list is for reference only; you cannot add to the list to prevent Find Fast from indexing additional words.

Security Issues

It is usually a more efficient use of disk space, index time, and search time to work with a single large index at the root level of a local or network drive rather than with several smaller indexes. However, large indexes introduce the following access and security concerns:

When sharing a folder on a local drive where the entire drive is indexed, users who connect to the shared drive do not have access to its index because it resides at a location above the shared folder. Users can still search the shared drive, but the search takes much longer because it does not use an index.

For example, if you share the folder C:\My Documents\Public as \\Mycomputer\Public, and you have indexed the entire C: drive, users who connect to \\Mycomputer\Public cannot use the index because they do not have access to the root of the C drive. To provide users with an index of \\Mycomputer\Public, remove the index of C: and create an index of C:\My Documents\Public through the Find Fast control panel.
When you are supporting remote users, make sure that they have read permission for all documents included in the index.

Potentially, anyone with access to an index can run word association queries and determine that a certain document contains certain words — even if that user does not have read permission for the document itself. For that reason, all users with access to the index should also have read permission for the documents.

Indexing and Password-Protected Documents

Find Fast does not index documents that have been password-protected by Office applications, because they are encrypted and therefore not searchable. Any references to document properties or content in password-protected documents are not included in the index. If Find Fast finds a password-protected document when creating an index, an entry is made in the Find Fast indexer log, Ffastlog.txt.

For more information about Office password protection, see "Security Features in Office" in Chapter 34, "Microsoft Office Architecture."

The Find Fast Indexer Log

The Find Fast indexer log is a text file in which Find Fast enters summaries of indexing tasks. The indexer log is named Ffastlog.txt and is stored in the Windows\System or System32 folder as a hidden file. Indexer log entries include completed or failed index creation and updating, and the names of files that could not be indexed (password-protected documents, for example).

Indexing task entries are ordered so that the most recent events appear at the end of the file. The indexer log is limited in size to 24 KB. When the file exceeds 24 KB, the oldest entries are deleted.

To view the indexer log

On the Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

– or –

In Windows NT Workstation 3.51, double-click Control Panel in the Main group in Program Manager.
Double-click Find Fast.
On the Index menu, click Show Indexer Log.

Tip You can prevent the indexer log from being truncated at 24 KB. Change the command-line arguments in the shortcut to Find Fast in the Startup folder: Add a /v at the end of the line. Or, if you are using Web Find Fast, add a registry value of any type named verbose to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Shared Tools\Find Fast\97. Do not assign any data to the value. When you use this technique, the indexer log is not truncated. You should truncate it manually from time to time, however, to conserve disk space.

What Happens to Office 95 Indexes in Office 97

The file formats for Find Fast 97 and Find Fast 95 differ. An index created by Find Fast 97 cannot be used by Office 95 applications.

When Find Fast is installed with Office 97, it immediately locates all indexes created by Find Fast 95. Those indexes are automatically deleted and replaced by Find Fast 97 indexes with identical index scope and settings. After you upgrade to Office 97, you can create additional indexes as well. If you create a Find Fast 97 index that is above, below, or at the same location as a Find Fast 95 index in a folder hierarchy, Find Fast 97 prompts you to delete the older index and replace it with a new index.

Supporting Find Fast

This section describes how the Find Fast indexing engine and search interface work with local or network drives. Unless otherwise noted, references to Windows include computers running the Windows 95 or Windows NT operating system.

Installing Find Fast

Find Fast is installed during Setup when you choose a Typical installation. When Find Fast is installed, it automatically indexes all Office documents on each local drive in the computer on which it was installed. If you install Find Fast on a network drive, however, you must manually start index creation through the Find Fast control panel.

Creating and Maintaining Indexes with Find Fast

You can open the Find Fast control panel to create additional indexes (for example, on a network drive), delete indexes, and set other options. In general, however, Find Fast indexes Office documents automatically and requires no end-user action.

By default, Find Fast creates a single index on each hard drive on your computer. (Find Fast does not automatically index removable drives.) However, you may want to create multiple indexes on a single drive (especially on shared or network drives). You can do so, although you cannot create indexes that overlap. For example, if you have a Find Fast index of the drive C:, you cannot then create an additional index of the folder C:\My Documents. To create an index of C:\My Documents, you must first delete the index of the drive C: through the Find Fast control panel.

Should I index the entire drive or just the folder?

The following are examples of when you might be better off creating multiple indexes on a single drive, rather than one large index:

When sharing a folder on a local drive

If the entire drive is indexed, users who connect to the shared drive do not have access to its index because it resides at a location above the shared folder. By creating an index specifically for the shared folder (and its nested subfolders), you allow users who connect to the shared folder to search its index. For an example of this situation, see "Security Issues" earlier in this chapter.
When maintaining multiple folders on a network drive

If your organization's relevant documents are concentrated in a few folders on a network drive, you can index just those folders. For example, if one folder contains documents intended for public viewing, and other folders are intended for private use or storage by individuals, you could index just the folder intended for public viewing.

Locating Index Files

Find Fast index files are located at the topmost level of the hierarchy of the indexed folders. For example, if you index an entire drive, the index file is located at the root of that drive. Find Fast index files are hidden files with the base name of Ffastun and the following extensions.

This index file extension	Indicates this type of file
.ffl	Document list
.ffx	Index
.ffo	Cache of document properties such as Author and Title
.ffa	Status file

Because you create and maintain index files through the Find Fast control panel, you do not normally need to work with these files directly. Do not attempt to copy, move, or change the attributes of these file types. If you need to delete or move a set of indexed folders, delete the index first through the Find Fast control panel, and then recreate the index after you move the folders.

The index files typically require about 7 percent of the space of the text component of the documents they index, or about 1 percent to 3 percent of the total document size.

Using Startup Switches for Find Fast Troubleshooting

In some circumstances you may want to start Find Fast in a special mode. You can do so with the following startup switches. You can use startup switches only when Find Fast is not already running. You can add a switch to the Find Fast shortcut in the Startup folder and then restart your computer, or you can close Find Fast by selecting the Close and Stop command (Index menu) in the Find Fast control panel and then restart Find Fast with a startup switch.

Note These startup switches are supported by Find Fast only. Do not attempt to use startup switches with Web Find Fast.

To run Find Fast with a startup switch

In Windows 95 or Windows NT Workstation 4.0, click Start, and then click Run.

– or –

In Windows NT Workstation 3.51, click Run on the Program Manager File menu.
Type the path and name of the Find Fast program, followed by the startup switch you want.

For example, to run Find Fast in verbose mode, type "C: \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Findfast /v" (if the path includes spaces in folder names, you must enclose the entire path in quotation marks, as shown here).

Tip In addition to running these startup switches at the command prompt, you can add them to the Find Fast shortcut in your Startup group, so that Find Fast starts with the switches you specify each time your computer starts.

The startup switches available include the following.

This startup switch	Has this effect
/u folder name where folder name is the path and name of a folder	Starts Find Fast, updates the index in this folder, and then closes Find Fast. Do not combine this switch with other switches.
/v	Runs the Find Fast log file in verbose mode, so that it is not automatically truncated at 24 KB.
/showui	Displays the Find Fast user interface.

Finding Documents with Find Fast

Document searching functionality is built into the Open dialog box (File menu) of Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Office Binder, and Microsoft Project. The Text or property box and all controls in the Advanced Find dialog box (viewable by clicking the Advanced button in the Open dialog box) rely on indexes created by Find Fast.

Cc749846.02605(en-us,TechNet.10).gif

In Outlook, this functionality is viewable by clicking the Advanced tab in the Find dialog box (Tools menu).

If users attempt to search a folder or drive that has not been indexed, they can still enter search criteria into the Text or property box or the Advanced Find dialog box; however, these searches take much longer to execute because each file needs to be compared against the search criteria individually.

Tip You can search multiple folders or drives simultaneously through the Advanced Find dialog box. In the Look in box, select the first drive or folder you want searched. Then enter additional drive or folder names separated by a semicolon. For example, if you enter C:\My Documents;D:\;E:\Public in the Look in box, Find Fast searches the folder My Documents on the C drive, the entire D drive, and the Public folder on the E drive. These drives may be any combination of local or network drives. Note that there are no spaces before or after the semicolons in the string.

Outlook uses the document properties cached in a Find Fast index, if available, when displaying Office documents in table views.

Cc749846.02606(en-us,TechNet.10).gif

Find Fast caches document properties by default. If document properties caching is turned off, you can turn it on by selecting the Speed up property display check box in the Create Index dialog box (Index menu) of the Find Fast control panel.

Supporting Web Find Fast

This section describes the Web Find Fast tools that are part of the Office Server Pack of utilities.

Caution The Office Server Pack installs a special Windows NT service version of Find Fast. If you install office 97 onto a server after installing the Office Server Pack, you must be careful to avoid replacing the Find Fast NT service with the less powerful single-user Find Fast. When you run the Office Setup program, choose the Custom installation. Under the Office Tools option, clear the Find Fast check box.

With Web Find Fast, you can index Office documents on Web servers and network drives or shared folders throughout your intranet. End users can then perform full-text searches of the index for words or phrases, or for specific document properties such as Subject or Author (custom properties are not supported). Users search the index through a Web query page, and the results are returned as a Web page. Clicking the name of a found document opens the document in the appropriate Office application.

There are two ways you can administer Web Find Fast. The first is through the Find Fast NT control panel on your Web server. The second is through the Web Find Fast Administration Tool (a set of HTML files) from any client computer on your intranet.

Web Find Fast without remote administration has the following requirements:

Windows NT Server 3.51 with Service Pack 5, or Windows NT Server 4.0
Internet Server API (ISAPI) or CGI-compliant Web server software running on one of the Windows NT operating systems

Note Web Find Fast can be used as an ISAPI DLL under Internet Information Server version 1.0 on Windows NT Server 3.51 with Service Pack 5, on Windows NT 4.0 Server or Workstation with Internet Information Server version 2.0 or later, or on other Internet servers that support ISAPI.

Web Find Fast with remote administration has the following requirements:

Windows NT Server 4.0
An NTFS partition on which to install the Administration Tool files (to enable security)
Internet Information Server 2.0 or later

Web Find Fast includes a CGI wrapper, Webserch.exe, that can be used with several Web servers under the Windows NT operating system. Supported Web servers include the following:

Internet Information Server 1.0 (Windows NT Server 3.51 with Service Pack 5).
Internet Information Server 2.0 (Windows NT Server 4.0 only).
Netscape Commerce Server version 1.1 (Windows NT Server 4.0, or Windows NT Server 3.51 with Service Pack 5).
Netscape Communications Server version 1.1 (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5).
Netscape Enterprise Server version 2.0 (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5).
Netscape Fast Track Server (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5).
IBM Internet Connection Server version 4.1 (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5).
O'Reilly's Web Site (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5). This server is also ISAPI-compliant and works with Webserch.dll.
O'Reilly's Web Site Pro (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5). This server is also ISAPI-compliant and works with Webserch.dll.
Purveyor Encrypt Server version 1.2 (Windows NT Server 4.0 and 3.51 with Service Pack 5).

Note Some Web servers — for example, Netscape Commerce and Netscape Fast Track — do not use the Windows registry to store Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) types but instead store them in other files. This may prevent such Web servers from properly returning Office documents correctly when requested from Web browsers — for example, through a hyperlink or Web Find Fast query. To correct this, you must edit the Mime.types files on your Web server. For more information, see "Netscape Web Server Support" in Chapter 24, "Integrating Microsoft Office with Your Intranet."

Installing Web Find Fast

Web Find Fast must be installed on a Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation computer configured as a Web server. If you are installing onto Windows NT Workstation, make sure you do not violate the connection license agreement with your HTTP server.

Tip Before you install Web Find Fast, you should review drive**:**\Srvpack\Readme.txt where drive is the letter of the Office Setup CD-ROM drive. The Readme file contains detailed system requirements, installation instructions, and troubleshooting tips.

To install Web Find Fast

Insert the Office Setup CD into the CD-ROM drive.
In Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation 4.0, double-click drive:\Srvpack\Setup, or click Run on the Start menu and type drive**:\Srvpack\Setup.exe** where drive is the letter of the CD-ROM drive.

– or –

In Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation 3.51, double-click drive:\Srvpack\Setup, or click Run on the Program Manager File menu and type drive**:\Srvpack\Setup.exe** where drive is the letter of the CD-ROM drive.
When prompted, select the Web Find Fast option; do not select Find Fast, indexer only.
When you are prompted to enter a logon account, select to use the system account if you do not plan to index documents on other servers or shared folders on your network. This option gives the Find Fast service the permissions it needs to create index files on the server on which it is installed and to read all files on the local server (except password-protected documents).

– or –

Supply an account that has access permissions for network folders if you plan to add other servers or shared folders on your network to your Web Find Fast index, or if you want to be able to correctly return File URLs in the results set (as opposed to HTTP URLs).

Note When you install Web Find Fast, Find Fast NT does not automatically begin indexing the drive. You must start the Find Fast NT control panel or use the Web Find Fast Administration Tool to create the indexes you want.

Creating and Maintaining Indexes with Web Find Fast

Before users can search a Web Find Fast index, you must create the index and customize the query pages so that they are linked to the index.

To create a Web Find Fast index

In Control Panel, double-click the Find Fast icon.
On the Index menu, click Create Index.
In the In and Below box, enter the name of the drive or folder you want to index, or click Browse and select a drive or folder. (All of the documents and nested subfolders in the drive or folder are indexed.)

Tip If you want users to have File access as well as HTTP access to documents on this Web site, enter a universal naming convention (UNC) name in the Find Fast Browse dialog box. This UNC must be shared with read access; make sure the account under which you are running the Find Fast NT service has correct logon permissions.
In the Of type box, select the types of documents you want indexed.

By default, all Office and HTML documents are indexed.

Select or clear any of the following check boxes:
- Continue to update automatically
- Speed up property display
- Enable phrase searching
- Include relevance information for Web searching
These options are all selected by default. For information about the consequences of disabling any of these options, see "Disabling Index Options" later in this section.
Click Web Options.
In the Alternate HTTP path box, enter the HTTP address for the selected path (for example, https://www.company.com/ ), and then click Modify.

You must be able to reach this HTTP mapping through your browser. If no HTTP URL exists for the selected path, then you must set one up on your Web server. An HTTP mapping is not necessary if you use the File protocol exclusively.
To include HTTP links for returned documents on your results page, click the path for which you want to create an HTTP mapping in the Index these folders for Web searching box.

See your Web server documentation for information about valid HTTP mappings.
In the Friendly Web name for this index box, enter a unique friendly name for your index.

Note If you want your Web searches to include other Web folders on the same computer or on network shares, you can use the Web Options dialog box to add any number of other folders to the index you are creating. Be sure to enter a valid HTTP address that maps to each of these folders, and give the Find Fast NT service an account with permissions to open these folders. Index information for these additional folders is used in Web searching, but not in searching from Outlook or from the Open dialog box (File menu) in the Office applications.

For more information about creating an index, see path\Webadmin\Webadhlp.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.

Disabling Index Options

When you create an index, you can choose to disable some of the indexing options supported by Web Find Fast. Doing so may require you to edit the query and results pages, as explained in the following sections.

Speed Up Property Display

If you clear the Speed up property display check box, Web Find Fast does not include document properties with search results (although you can still search for document properties).

If you disable this option, you should modify the Query.htm and Queryadv.htm files on your Web server, which by default specify that all properties should be returned. Edit this line:

Each T (TRUE) in this string indicates that a document property should be returned. Change the T to an F (FALSE) for the property you do not want returned, using this order:

GIF icon
Title
Author
Keywords
Subject
Date Last Modified
Comments
Category
Size
Contents
URL

Enable Phrase Searching

If you clear the Enable phrase searching check box, you can edit the Query.htm and Queryadv.htm files to alert users that phrase searching is disabled. For example, when phrase searching is disabled, searching for the phrase "annual budget" (note the quotation marks) does not return the results users might expect. Web Find Fast returns any documents that contain annual and budget whether or not the two words are adjacent. If you are indexing a large group of documents, disabling phrase searching can have the unexpected consequence of returning more documents than you would like.

Include Relevance Information for Web Searching

If you clear the Include relevance information for Web searching check box, you must change the default sort order to something other than relevance. This is determined by the following line in Query.htm or Queryadv.htm:

Replace "Relevance" in this string with one of the following values:

"Author"
"SavedDate"
"FileName"
"Size"

Note Changing the default sort order slows searches dramatically.

Linking a Query Page to an Index

For each Web Find Fast index you create, you must customize a query page so that the query page is linked to that index. The query pages Query.htm and Queryadv.htm (which provides advanced searching functionality) are located in the folder you selected for Web files during Setup. These are the query pages that use your Web Find Fast index.

You can edit the HTML source page for the query pages using a text editor (such as Notepad); then save the HTML source file back to Query.htm or Queryadv.htm.

To link the query page to a specific index

Edit the following line in Query.htm:

< INPUT TYPE = "hidden" NAME = "Index" VALUE = "">

Between the quotation marks following VALUE =, insert the friendly name you chose for the index when you created it in the Find Fast NT control panel.
Save the HTML source file back to Query.htm.
Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for Queryadv.htm.
Make sure you have created a valid HTTP address for the query page. (See your Web server documentation.) Read and execute permissions are required. Using this address, you can open the query page in any Web browser.

If you create more than one index, give each index a different name. You can copy Query.htm and Queryadv.htm and then customize them to create any number of query pages to search different indexes. Or you can use more advanced HTML tags such as the Select tag to let your users choose among different indexes on a single custom query page. For more information, see path\Webadmin\Webadhlp.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.

A Windows NT Password Change Does Not Propagate to the Find Fast NT Service

The Web Find Fast component of Find Fast NT requires network access to index documents. To get permission for network access, the Find Fast NT service must be logged on under a user account — normally the administrator's account. When an administrator's password is changed or expires on Windows NT Server or Windows NT Workstation, the Find Fast NT service halts indexing and will not restart at the next system restart. To fix this problem, log on to the Find Fast NT service under the new user account or password, and then restart the service. For more information, see "Changing the Find Fast Service Logon Account" later in this section.

Alternatively, you can run the Find Fast service under an account with a password that never expires. For example, if you are indexing documents only on the Web server, you can run the Find Fast service under the LocalSystem account. This account, under which most services run, has no password. The LocalSystem account does not allow access to any network services, however, so it does not support the indexing of content on other computers or using network names (such as UNC names) for folders.

Using the Web Find Fast Administration Tool

As an alternative to using the Find Fast NT control panel, you can use the Web Find Fast Administration Tool to create, modify, and delete indexes and to perform other administrative tasks. The Web Find Fast Administration Tool is a set of HTML documents that you can open with a Web browser from any client computer on your intranet. To allow for proper security, it is recommended that you install the Web Find Fast Administration Tool files on an NTFS partition during Setup.

In addition to working from a remote client computer, you can also perform these tasks directly on your Web server using the Web Find Fast Administration Tool, or you can perform some of these tasks through the Find Fast NT control panel on your Web server.

To start the Web Find Fast Administration Tool

On any client computer on your intranet or on the Web server itself, open path\Webadmin\Adminwiz1.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.
Follow the instructions on your screen.

For complete instructions about using the Web Find Fast Administration Tool and customizing the query and results pages, open its Help file in drive:\Srvpack\Webadmin\Webadhlp.htm, where drive is the letter of the Office Setup CD-ROM drive. To view the Help file after installation, open path\Webadmin\Webadhlp.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.

To become familiar with the search operators and options available to the Web Find Fast user, you should also review the Help file for the query pages. This Help file is located in path\Websrch\Queryhlp.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.

Understanding the Web Find Fast Index Structure

Unlike the index files used by Find Fast, Web Find Fast has a more monolithic index structure. With Web Find Fast, you can create a base index of your Web server (or a portion of it) and then add additional index components for other Web servers, network drives, or shared folders.

Depending on the organization of the Office documents on your network, this can be a great advantage over Find Fast searching. As the administrator, you can create a single index file that is tied to a single query page. The single index file can cover the exact range of your Web servers and other drives that you want indexed. Because the scope of the index is determined by the administrator, the end user does not think of searching in terms of drives or folders, but in terms of which query page to use.

One disadvantage of this index structure is that for each index file you create, you must customize a query page to search it. You do so by editing HTML code on the query page. For more information, see the Web Find Fast administrator Help file path\Webadmin\Webadhlp.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.

Web Find Fast relies solely on the accuracy of its index. Unlike Find Fast, Web Find Fast does not perform brute force checks of documents to verify search results. This results in faster performance of Web Find Fast. You can also control the frequency of updating of the indexes Web Find Fast relies on. To change the frequency of index updates, select the Update Interval command (Index menu) in the Find Fast NT control panel.

Using Web Find Fast for Web Site Administration

Because Web Find Fast can index HTML documents, you may find Web Find Fast to be a useful tool in managing your Web site (either an intranet or Web site). For example, if you want to locate all occurrences of a hyperlink that you need to correct, you can use Web Find Fast to find the documents that contain the hyperlink.

Changing the Find Fast Service Logon Account

After you install Web Find Fast, you can change the account under which the Find Fast NT service is logged on. For example, if you initially logged the service on under an account that has now expired, you can change the service account to a new account.

To change the Find Fast NT account

On the Windows 95 or Windows NT Server 4.0 Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

– or –

In Windows NT Server 3.51, double-click Control Panel in the Main group in Program Manager.
Double-click Services.
In the Service box, select Microsoft Find Fast Service.
If its status is listed as started, click Stop.
Click Startup.
To use the LocalSystem account, select System Account under Log On As.

– or –

To use another account, select This Account and enter the account name and password.
Click OK, and then click Start to restart the Find Fast service.

Finding Documents with Web Find Fast

The user interface for searching with Web Find Fast is an HTML query page viewable in a Web browser. Web Find Fast includes two query pages, Query.htm and Queryadv.htm:

Query.htm is a simple search page that supports word and phrase searching.
Queryadv.htm is a more capable search page that supports not only word and phrase searching but also searching for some document properties (such as Title and Subject) and relevance ranking.

Both query pages allow the user to specify the number of documents to be returned at a time. The advanced query page, Queryadv.htm, is shown in the following illustration.

Cc749846.02607(en-us,TechNet.10).gif

After the user submits a Web Find Fast query, Web Find Fast processes the request and returns a list of the found documents in an HTML document, Results.htm.

Cc749846.02608(en-us,TechNet.10).gif

Web Find Fast returns not only the names of the found documents but also other document properties if they are available from the index. Selecting a found document opens it in the appropriate Office application.

The query and results pages are fully customizable. You customize these pages by editing HTML code on the page itself. For more information, see the Web Find Fast administrator Help file path\Webadmin\Webadhlp.htm, where path is the path to which you installed Web Find Fast on your Web server.