OFF97: Find Fast Indexes Special FrontPage Directories

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Office 97 for Windows
• Microsoft FrontPage for Windows, version 1.1

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, you should first make a backup copy of the registry files (System.dat and User.dat). Both are hidden files in the Windows folder.

SYMPTOMS

The Find Fast Indexer included with Microsoft Office 97 allows you to create an index of content contained on your computer. If you have any Microsoft FrontPage webs on your computer, Find Fast Indexer may index your webs. This may cause a problem when you try to use the Microsoft FrontPage WebBot Search component.

CAUSE

When you create a Microsoft FrontPage web on a computer, a large directory "tree" is created. Some of the directories contained in this tree are administrative directories: that is, they are intended for use only by Microsoft FrontPage itself. Information contained in these directories is not normally exposed to users.

If the Find Fast Indexer indexes any of the following directories:

   _private
   _vti_bin
   _vti_cnf
   _vti_log
   _vti_pvt
   _vti_shm
   _vti_txt

WORKAROUND

It is possible to force the Find Fast Indexer to skip such directories by adding a key to the registry of the computer that contains the FrontPage web(s).

WARNING: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall Windows 95. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Before making changes to the registry, turn off the Find Fast Indexer. To do this:

1. On the Start menu, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

2. Double-click the Find Fast icon.

3. On the Index menu, click Close and Stop. Click OK to close the Find Fast Indexer.

To add the key to the registry:

1. On the Start menu, click Run. In the Open edit box, type "regedit", without quotation marks, and click OK.

2. Scroll through the registry tree to the following branch:

         HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\FindFast\97
   

3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and click DWORD Value. Name the new value "ExcludeFPTemp" (without quotation marks).

4. Select the new key and click Modify on the Edit menu.

5. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, set the Value Data to 1. Click OK.

6. On the Registry menu, click Exit.

MORE INFORMATION

Setting the ExcludeFPTemp registry key to "1" prevents Find Fast Indexer from indexing any directory whose name begins with "_vti" or whose name is "_private".

To reenable indexing of the "_vti" and "_private" directories, follow the steps in the Workaround section, with one exception. Set the value of the ExcludeFPTemp key to "0" (without quotation marks) to reenable indexing.