IE9: How to enable searching in address bar when that option is greyed out?

Question

The checkbox to allow searching in the address bar in IE 9 is unchecked and greyed out. Is there any other way to enable it?

Answer 1

There is a group policy to disable searching from the Address Bar, it's been around since IE7, and it may (haven't tested personally) have the affect you're seeing on IE9:

Do not search from the Address bar: Specifies to not use the Address bar for searches. You can still perform searches in the Search bar by clicking the Search button in the toolbar

You can check its status by running rsop.msc.

You can find the GP setting in User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Internet Explorer->Internet Settings->Advanced settings->Searching

If your computer is part of a company domain network, then you'll have to talk to the company IT folks to get them to set the policy to something other than "Do not search from the Address bar". If not, yet it's set for some reason, you should be able to use gpedit.msc to edit the policies of your machine, to change it to what you'd like.