WDS doesn't find Emails?

[chris]

I have just installed a new harddrive and using XP pro, Office 2003 and
trying to get WSD to find emails...I "indexed now" and have the Outlook
folder checked (both redone several times) and it doesn't search email. I am
up-to-date according to OneCare and all....

Any ideas?

 

[VanguardLH]

I have just installed a new harddrive and using XP pro, Office 2003
and
trying to get WSD to find emails...I "indexed now" and have the
Outlook
folder checked (both redone several times) and it doesn't search
email. I am
up-to-date according to OneCare and all....

Any ideas?

This is not an issue with Outlook. Windows Desktop Search is not part
of Outlook or Office.

I know from a quick trial of WDS (in a virtual machine) that including
a path that includes Outlook's .pst files will not get WDS to read
them. WDS will only read .eml and .msg files but no user is going to
waste their time repeatedly exporting their e-mails every hour to an
..eml (for OE) or .msg (for Outlook) file. So WDS must use Outlook or
OE themself to get inside their message stores to do the indexing. I
don't have WDS installed anymore in the VM because I've never been
enthralled with indexing utilities and didn't see anything fantastic
about WDS that I absolutely had to have (or even wanted to have).
You'll have to dig around inside the preferences or configuration of
WDS to see if you need to set it to recognize Outlook and Outlook
Express are installed.

The other behavior that I noticed about WDS is that the host must be
idle (i.e., no keyboard or mouse activity by you) for awhile before it
will actually do the indexing. Even clicking the button to do a
rebuild of the index won't do the indexing immediately unless you
leave the computer idle for awhile (Microsoft doesn't mention how long
WDS will wait). So don't expect any new indexing to complete for
awhile. Indexing, even at low priority, can impact the responsiveness
of the host not only because of CPU cycle consumption but because of
the increased traffic over the data bus.

 

[Gordon]

I know from a quick trial of WDS (in a virtual machine) that including a
path that includes Outlook's .pst files will not get WDS to read them.

Not true. WDS will search pst files. It is doing so as I write this.

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

...

Not true. WDS will search pst files. It is doing so as I write this.

When I tested, I copied over my current .pst file for Outlook 2002
into the VM under my %userprofile% which looked to be included in the
only path specified by the install-time defaults of WDS. I then had
it rebuild the index. I came back later and couldn't find anything in
my e-mails. In my case, the .pst file would NOT be in the path
specified in Outlook - because I didn't have Outlook installed in the
VM.

Have you tested if WDS will index the content of .pst files if they
are in some different path than the one specified in Outlook as the
location for its message store?

Also, according to the E-mail and Other filetypes mentioned in WDS'
own help, it will index .eml and .msg files but .pst wasn't listed.
So it would be interesting to know if WDS requires Outlook to be
installed to get into the .pst files.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

It does. Outlook 2007's new Instant Search uses the WDS engine. Without
Outlook 2007, WDS does not index a PST file.

 

[VanguardLH]

in message

It does. Outlook 2007's new Instant Search uses the WDS engine.
Without Outlook 2007, WDS does not index a PST file.

Outlook 2007 is a requirement to get WDS to index .pst files? Well,
it's good then that I was just playing around to see if I had changed
my mind about using an indexing service. I'm still using Outlook
2002. Wonder what version of Outlook that Gordon uses (since he said
WDS works for him).