I’ve talked about the search feature of MOSS before and one of the recent things we’ve been looking at is to include a search box on the main page so users can search the shared folders on the system. There is a handy way of categorising various area so users can search shared drives, MOSS, people, and their own drives separately or perform a combined search. In our scenario, getting the search component to work and provide a useful searching facility in our thin client environment is key to establishing MOSS as a viable platform. I previously talked about configuring the search part in the post MOSS: Configuring Search.

The search on the search tab worked flawlessly but would be more useful as a central part of the main page so the next step is to include a web part on the main page that the user sees:

Once implemented the page is saved and ready to go, so a keyword is entered into the search box and the search button clicked. This is where we run into a little trouble.

Including a search web page on the first page of MOSS returns a "Error on Page." message in Internet Explorer after typing a keyword and clicking on the search button. Nothing happens after that however clicking on the search tab and performing the same action yields the expected results.

Double-clicking on the error message returns a stark warning.

The problem was finally tracked down to the text in the Query box prompt string – the phrase Search the ‘S’ Drive contained the apostrophe symbol:

Removing this symbol resolved the problem. Avoiding the use of the apostrophe symbol in other areas may be a sensible thing to do.