Recategorize Research Services in the Research Task Pane

Angela Wong
Microsoft Corporation

November 2003

Applies to:
    Microsoft® Office Word 2003
    Microsoft Office Excel 2003
    Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003
    Microsoft Office OneNote™ 2003
    Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2003
    Microsoft Office Publisher 2003
    Microsoft Office Visio® Standard 2003
    Microsoft Internet Explorer

Summary: As you discover and add useful research services to your collection, you may want to categorize them in the Research task pane. These steps are provided to assist you with the categorization process. (8 printed pages)

Contents

Introduction
Categorize Research Services
Supported Research Categories
Modify the Category for a Research Service
Modify the CategoryID
Conclusion

Introduction

The Microsoft® Office 2003 Research feature allows you to search public, corporate, or subscription databases without leaving your Microsoft Office application or Microsoft Internet Explorer. By default, the Microsoft Office System provides the Dictionary, Translation, Thesaurus, Microsoft Encarta® Encyclopedia, MSN® Search, and MSN Money Stock Quotes services. You can readily access these research services from the Research task pane in Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office OneNote™ 2003, Microsoft Office Office PowerPoint® 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, Microsoft Office Visio® Standard 2003, and Internet Explorer. Research services support rich interactions with your Office applications to help you integrate research results into your documents.

Categorize Research Services

By default, research services included with the Microsoft Office System are grouped under specific categories (such as All Reference Books, All Research Sites, All Business and Financial Sites, All Intranet Sites and Portals):

Figure 1. Research services are grouped under default categories

When you add a new research service to the Research task pane, the service is grouped under a category that is predefined by the research service provider.

However, as you discover and add more research services, you may want to reorganize services under different categories. Even though the user interface does not provide a means for recategorization, your system administrator can modify your registry to recategorize your services.

Supported Research Categories

The Research feature supports a list of categories to group research services in the Research task pane.

Table 1. Research categories, CategoryIDs, and enumeration values

Each research service has a matching key in the registry. The registry key contains information about that research service including CategoryID and Description. CategoryID identifies the category that a research service is grouped under. For example, by default, the Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service is listed under the All Research Sites category in the Research task pane. The service has a registry key with the values and data shown in Figure 2. Note that its CategoryID is 0x40080000, which identifies All Research Sites as its category.

Figure 2. Registry key of Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America)

For more information, and updates about the predefined categories for research services, see the Microsoft Office Research Service Software Development Kit.

Modify the Category for a Research Service

For an example, you could move the Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service from its initial All Research Sites category to the All Reference Books category:

Figure 3. Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service listed under its default category

Figure 4. Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service under a different category

To move the research service, modify its CategoryID with the value that identifies the All Reference Books category. You can find the value using the preceding category table.

The following procedure demonstrates how to modify the registry to change the CategoryID. Note that such changes remain in the registry as long as you do not update the research service. Whenever you update a research service, registry settings for that service is reset and all previous registry customizations for that service is lost.

Caution   Editing the registry incorrectly may severely damage your operating system, requiring you to reinstall it. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from editing the registry incorrectly can be resolved. Before editing the registry, back up any valuable data. For the most recent information about using and protecting your computer's registry, see Microsoft Windows Help.

Modify the CategoryID

1. Close all instances of Office applications and Internet Explorer.

   Note   When you have closed all Microsoft Office applications, there may still be Office processes that continue to run in the background, for example, winword.exe. Use the Windows Task Manager to end all Office processes.

2. Open the Registry Editor by clicking Start, Run, typing regedit, and clicking OK.

3. In the registry tree (in the left pane of the Registry Editor), expand the key My Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Research\Sources. Each subkey under the Sources key represents a research service provider that has one or more research services registered on your computer.

   

   Figure 5. Registry Editor showing a list of subkeys for research service providers

4. Scroll down the list of keys for the registered research providers. Find the key for the research provider that has (on the right pane of the Registry Editor) the Provider Name listed as Microsoft Office Online Services.

   

   Figure 6. ProviderName of a research service provider

5. After you have found the key for the research provider with the Provider Name of Microsoft Office Online Services, expand the key to display the list of subkeys. The list of subkeys identifies the research services provided by that research service provider.

6. Click the subkey that identifies the Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service. This subkey should have Find up-to-date information, thousands of articles, and rich multimedia with Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. as the Description in the right pane.

7. In the right pane, right-click CategoryID and point to Modify.

   

   Figure 7. Modify CategoryID of the Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service

8. Type 36240000 in the Value Data text box. This represents the All Reference Books category.

   

   Figure 8. New value data for the Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service

9. Click OK.

10. Close the Registry Editor.

When you open the Research task pane again, you will find the Encarta Encyclopedia: English (North America) research service grouped under the All Reference Books category.

Conclusion

Recategorizing research services in the Microsoft Office 2003 Research task pane is a simple procedure that will give your users a quick way to locate the powerful research services that they need.

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