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I'd like to be able to search for all word files in a certain folder that contains some textual phrase. To my understanding, be able to do it, Windows-7 needs to index this folder.

I open 'Indexing-Options' dialog and tried to add a network drive to the list of indexed location but my network drives were not available.

I saw somewhere that in order to do it this network drives need to be marked as 'Offline' but I can't do it. This drive MUST be online because I work on it concurrently with my co-workers.

In summary my question: Is it possible to add a network drive to the indexing location of Windows-7 without changing this drive to be 'offline'? Is there any other way to be able to search inside MS-word documents of some folder in my network drive through Windows search?

Spiderman
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  • What OS is your server? Setup Windows Search on the Server, and the server will index, and your client will consult the server for its index. – Zoredache Dec 12 '11 at 00:08
  • It's not clear to me why you decided to close this topic - what's the difference between this and other questions such as this http://serverfault.com/questions/339896/how-to-make-win-7-index-network-drives that fits the topics of Serverfault – Spiderman Dec 13 '11 at 08:03
  • Because it is not clear in your question that you personally are in a role of maintaining a network in a professional capacity. You are talking about a desktop OS, and you didn't mention anything that would hint that you are responsible for the network/server. BTW you linked to your own question, did you intend to link to something else? – Zoredache Dec 13 '11 at 08:26
  • Sorry, I meant to refer to this question as an example - http://serverfault.com/questions/16721/is-there-a-way-to-avoid-reindexing-files-on-each-microsoft-search-service-crawl . So I am confused whether windows-7 built-in search and its index utility are legitimate topics or not – Spiderman Dec 13 '11 at 10:07

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Marking a network resource as “Make Available Offline” basically creates a cache of all files held on that store locally. This is how windows will then index the file as it cannot index network shares. When a folder or network drive entirely is available offline you can still work on any shared documents. Windows is just keeping a cached copy. The only time this copy will be used is if the network connection is taken out (the actual use for this feature) or when indexing. Depending on how much local space and how big the network drive is you may or may not be able to do this.

Zapto
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  • About Offline option: "...The next time you disconnect from the network, you'll still be able to open, modify, and save the file the same way you would if you were still connected. And when you do connect to the network again, Windows will automatically sync the offline file on your computer with the corresponding file on the network to update it..." I want to prevent windows from auto-sync the word document that is shared. This is too risky. That's why I can't use this option. So should I look for an external search-tool and give up windows built-in search? – Spiderman Dec 12 '11 at 08:02