Tips & Tricks

Change Your Address Bar Search Engine

Guess what? You aren't stuck using MSN as your search engine when you search from the address bar or when you click "Search" to bring up the sidebar.

With Internet Explorer just click View / Explorer Bar / Search (or click the "Search" button in your Toolbar) to bring up the side panel. If you have a side bar with a little dog at the bottom, then click "Change Preferences" then "Change Internet Search Behavior" to bring up a list of search engine you can use.

Highlight the one you want then click OK .

This new default setting will only apply to searches done in the side bar. If you type a word into your address bar, it still goes to MSN. Before you go on with the next step, be really sure that you want to change the setting to "classic" because I have not found a way to change back to the newer style search sidebar.

To change where the address bar search looks, select the radio button marked "With Classic Internet Search" before clicking OK . Close Explorer and reopen it. You'll notice that the sidebar looks different now. Plain text on white like the earlier versions of IE. The menu bar has a button at the top marked "Customize". Clicking it will open the "Customize Search Settings" box. Next, choose the "Autosearch Settings" button to bring up a box where you can change the default engine for address bar searches.

Once you pick the one you want, close the sidebar.

Now when you type a word in the address bar, it will bring up the results on the page of your favorite search engine.

~ David

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