Make Sharepoint Search available directly in Office 2003

Every day I find another little productivity enhancement through correct use of Sharepoint. There are a lot of little known integration points between Office 2003 Desktop applications and Sharepoint, and there are also a lot of well-known whoes and problems in the same sphere. I've focused on the problems a lot lately so I'd like to point out a very cool thing.

Patrick Tisseghem wrote a very good article over at the Office Developer Center on SPS Search. The coolest thing for end users in his article was how to hook in search in the Research pane of Office 2003.

It is very simple:

1. Open Word or Excel
2. Click the header of the toolpane to the right in the window and choose Research
3. Click Research options... in the bottom of the pane
4. Click Add services
5. Enter the following url, replacing "myPortal" with the base url of your portal:
   http://myPortal/_vti_bin/search.asmx
6. Click ok and you've got your portal as a possible source to research from Office!

Way to go Patrick!