Activating and Deactivating the Search Box Feature for an Application

The Search & Preview Search Box feature provides a subset of the capabilities provided by the full Search & Preview feature. It enables you to activate and manage the Search Box for a group of site collections that do not otherwise have the full Search & Preview feature active. Usually, you will do this if you use the SharePoint “My Sites” feature (see also “Using the Search Box with “My Sites”“).

When you activate the Search-Box-only feature for a given web application, the following happens:

• The default Microsoft search box control is replaced by the Search & Preview Search Box for all site collections belonging to that application (regardless of whether the full Search & Preview feature is activated for those site collections).

When you deactivate Search-Box-only feature for a given web application, the following happens:

• The Search & Preview Search Box is replaced by the default Microsoft search box for all site collections that both belong to that application and do not have the full Search & Preview feature is activated.

To activate or deactivate Search & Preview for all of the site collections in a given web application, do the following:

1. Open the SharePoint Central Administration site.

2. Click on the Application Management tab to open the Application Management page

3. Select Manage Web application features under the SharePoint Web Application Management heading. The Manage Web Application Features page is now shown.

4. Use the Web Application action menu to select the application you want to work with.

5. To toggle the activation status of the Search & Preview Search Box for your selected application, click on the button next to the Search & Preview Search Box icon.

Please see also your SharePoint documentation for more information about how to open the SharePoint Central Administration site and use it to work with Features and other aspects of your SharePoint installation.