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Searching SharePoint with Windows 7 Search Connectors

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Windows 7 allows you to create custom search connectors to various OpenSearch standard search engines, e.g. Bing and you guessed it:  SharePoint!  Creating a search connector is super easy!

1.  Open Notepad and copy in the XML below

2.  Replace the areas in red with your SharePoint Search Center information.  Be sure to only replace just the part of the URL that gets to your Search Center:  e.g.  https://sharepoint.company.com/SearchCenter   You can also change the scope:  e.g.  &s=Intranet  or  &s=All%20Sites  or even  &s=People

3.  Save the file to your Desktop as:    SharePointSite.osdx

4.  Double click the file to install the Search Connector.  (it will install to your “Searches” directory  e.g.   c:\Users\<username>\Searches

Optional:  you can add a shortcut the favorites area on any Windows Explorer window by dragging the installed Search Connector there.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="https://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="https://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>SharePoint Search</ShortName>
<Description>Search the SharePoint site.</ Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="https://sharepoint.company.com/searchcenter/\_layouts/srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}\&s=All%20Sites"/>
<Url type="text/html" template="https://sharepoint.company.com/searchcenter/Pages/Results.aspx?k={searchTerms}\&s=All%20Sites"/>
<ms-ose:ResultsProcessing format="application/rss+xml">
<ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>-1</ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>
</ms-ose:ResultsProcessing>
</OpenSearchDescription>