Roy of Superior Art Creations

Roy/SAC ANSI art , ASCII art , Text art, Pixel art, Wikipedia, deviantART, Cirque Du Soleil and fun.

« In Case You Forgot Adobe Photoshop at Home, don???t worry! - What is Your Favorite Cirque du Soleil Show? »

Microsoft Internet Explorer Search Providers Import and Export

Categories: Tools

Tags: No Tags

Comments: No Comments

Published on: May 22, 2009

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and 8 and also Mozilla Fire Fox come with a feature called “Custom Search Providers” or Search Scopes. It allows you to add web sites and search engines to your search box to search them directly, if you need to. For example could you add Amazon.com search to your search providers and search the Amazon.com site directly from your search box, if you are looking for a book, CD or DVD and use Amazon.com as primary online shop for this kind of purchases.

ie-custsearchproviders1

You can get a selection of custom search providers at this Microsoft web site. There you can find a number of options for popular web sites and other search engines. Also available there is the option to create your own custom search provider for your favorite web site. This is possible, as long as the site provides a site search option and passes the search parameters, such as the search term in the URL.

If you have a web site yourself and want to offer your visitors the option to add your site search to their web browser, then you can do that as well. I did this for my small project SQLHunt.com, a MS SQL Server resources meta-search engine based on Google Custom Search Engine. See the link at the bottom of the homepage that reads “Widgets and Gadgets”. One of the options there is to add the SQLHunt.com search to your web browser.

The search providers page for Internet Explorer on the Microsoft web site.

ie-custsearchproviders2

All nice and good and I made myself good use of this feature. I have by now probably 20+ custom search providers added to my search box. Some via the Microsoft web site, others custom or via the “add” option at a web site directly. There is unfortunately no easy way to copy your search providers to another computer or to back it up and re-install, if you do a re-install of your current system.

The search providers (or search scopes) are stored by Microsoft in the Windows System Registry. You can find your current search scopes and export them via the system tool RegEdit.exe to a file at

HKEY_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes

For each search provider exists a sub-key, in case that you only want to export specific search providers and not all of them. You can then take the exported file (with the extension .REG), copy it to the other machine and double click on it. You should be prompted to acknowledge that you want to import the file into the system registry. Do that and your search provider settings will be imported.

Here is a simple BATCH script to export and import your search provider settings.

SearchScope.bat Code

Download the source code for SearchScope.bat here (you need to remove the additional .txt extension of the file when you save the file to your local hard disk).

   1:  @echo off

   2:  CLS

   3:  if "%1"=="" (CALL :SELOPT) ELSE SET OPT=%1

   4:  if "%2"=="" Call :GETFP

   5:  ??

   6:  IF %OPT%==IMPORT Call :DoImport

   7:  IF %OPT%==EXPORT Call :DoExport

   8:  Echo Finished!

   9:  Echo.

  10:  pause

  11:  GOTO :EOF

  12:  ??

  13:  :SELOPT

  14:  echo Microsoft Custom Search Provider Import/Export Tool

  15:  echo by Carsten Cumbrowski aka Roy/SaC at http://www.roysac.com/blog

  16:  echo.

  17:  SET /p OTmp=Enter (I) to Import, (E) to Export or (A) to Abort:

  18:  IF "%OTmp%"=="I" SET OPT=IMPORT&SET OK=1

  19:  IF "%OTmp%"=="i" SET OPT=IMPORT&SET OK=1

  20:  IF "%OTmp%"=="E" SET OPT=EXPORT&SET OK=1

  21:  IF "%OTmp%"=="e" SET OPT=EXPORT&SET OK=1

  22:  If NOT "%OK%"=="1" EXIT

  23:  GOTO :EOF

  24:  ??

  25:  :GETFP

  26:  echo.

  27:  echo Please Specify the name and path for the file to %OPT%

  28:  Echo Enter "a' to abort.

  29:  echo.

  30:  SET /P FNAME=File Name:

  31:  if %OPT%==IMPORT (

  32:    IF "%FNAME%"=="" EXIT

  33:    IF NOT EXIST "%FNAME%" Call :GETFP

  34:  )

  35:  GOTO :EOF

  36:  ??

  37:  :DoImport

  38:  REG Import %FNAME%>NUL 2>&1

  39:  Echo Search Scopes Imported

  40:  Goto :EOF

  41:  ??

  42:  :DoExport

  43:  REG Export "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes" %FNAME%>Nul 2>&1

  44:  Echo Search Scopes Exported to %FNAME%

  45:  GOTO :EOF

Here is a more complex example script. It reads the settings from the HKEY_USER branch rather than the HKEY_CURRENT_USER one. The script looks up the SID for the current user and exports the registry settings, replacing the SID with a place holder to be substituted when imported again elsewhere.

This was more of a “proof of concept”, since you do not have to go through all this length as the script above illustrates. I got the “inspiration” from the blog post “Working with Registry Keys in a Batch File” by “rhyous” at the LandDesk User Community.

However, this batch could be modified to export the settings from other users on the same machine. It was not easy to accomplish and very tricky to do. Just for a test, look at the code and tell honestly, if you understand every statement used there.

The only thing you would have to do, is replacing %%USERPROFILE%% with the path to the users home directory (e.G. “C:\Documents and Settings\UserName”

SearchScopesImportExport.bat Code

Download the source code for SearchScopesImportExport.bat here (you need to remove the additional .txt extension of the file when you save the file to your local hard disk).

   1:  @Echo off

   2:  cls

   3:  SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS

   4:  SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION

   5:  if "%*"=="" Goto :ShowUsage

   6:  if "%~2"=="" Goto :ShowUsage

   7:  ??

   8:  SET RootKey="HKLM\software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList"

   9:  Set Val=ProfileImagePath

  10:  ??

  11:  Call SET CurProf=%%USERPROFILE%%

  12:  SET CurSID=""

  13:  ??

  14:  Echo Determining Current User's SID ...

  15:  Call :GETSID %RootKey%

  16:  Echo The current users SID is %CurSID%

  17:  Call Set RegTmp=%Temp%\%CurSID%_SearchScopes.reg

  18:  ??

  19:  IF "%1"=="export" Call :ExportScopes "%~2"

  20:  IF "%1"=="import" Call :ImportScopes "%~2"

  21:  ??

  22:  Echo.

  23:  echo Done Processing

  24:  echo.

  25:  pause

  26:  echo.

  27:  Goto :EOF

  28:  ??

  29:  ??

  30:  :GETSID

  31:  FOR /F "tokens=7* delims=\" %%i IN ('REG QUERY "%~1"') DO (

  32:    FOR /F "tokens=2*" %%a in ('REG QUERY "%~1\%%~i" /v %Val% ^|FINDSTR %Val%') DO (

  33:       CALL SET ldclientdir=%%b

  34:       if "%CurProf%"=="!ldclientdir!" (

  35:         Set CurSID=%%~i

  36:       )

  37:    )

  38:  )

  39:  GOTO :EOF

  40:  ??

  41:  :ExportScopes

  42:  echo Exporting Search Scope Settings ...

  43:  REG Export "HKU\%CurSID%\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes" %RegTmp%>Nul 2>&1

  44:  Echo Replacing SID with place-holder CURRENTUSERSID ...

  45:  Call :SandR %RegTmp% "%~1" %%CurSID%% CURRENTUSERSID

  46:  goto :eof

  47:  ??

  48:  :SandR

  49:  ::1 = input file

  50:  ::2 = output file

  51:  ::3 = search string

  52:  ::4 = replacement value

  53:  if EXIST "%~2" DEL /Q "%~2"

  54:  for /f "tokens=1,* delims=]" %%a in ('"type "%~1"|find /n /v """') do (

  55:     CALL SET _result=%%b

  56:     if NOT "%%b"=="" (

  57:       CALL SET _fchar=%%_result:~0,1%%

  58:       if "!_fchar!"=="[" (

  59:         set "line=%%b"

  60:         if defined line (

  61:            call set "line=echo.%%line:%3=%4%%"

  62:            for /f "delims=" %%X in ('"echo."%%line%%""') do %%~X>>"%~2"

  63:         )   ELSE echo.>>"%~2"

  64:       ) else (

  65:           echo %%b>>"%~2"

  66:       )

  67:     ) else (

  68:         echo.>>"%~2"

  69:     )

  70:  )

  71:  goto :eof

  72:  ??

  73:  :ImportScopes

  74:  if NOT EXIST "%~1" GOTO :ShowUsage

  75:  echo Preparing Registry Data for Import ...

  76:  echo Replacing place-holder CURRENTUSERSID with SID ...

  77:  if EXIST %RegTmp% Del %RegTmp%

  78:  Call :SandR "%~1" %RegTmp% CURRENTUSERSID %%CurSID%%

  79:  Echo Importing Search Scopes ...

  80:  if EXIST %RegTmp% REG Import %RegTmp%>NUL 2>&1

  81:  goto :eof

  82:  ??

  83:  ??

  84:  :ShowUsage

  85:  cls

  86:  echo.

  87:  echo USAGE

  88:  echo   Script.bat import^|export IMPORTFILE.REG^|OUTPUTFILE.REG

  89:  echo.

  90:  echo Example Export of current Search Scopes to a file

  91:  echo with the name MySearchScopes to the local directory C:\Data

  92:  echo.

  93:  echo   Script.bat export c:\Data\MySearchScopes.reg

  94:  echo.

  95:  Echo Example Import of Search Scopes from file generated via this script

  96:  Echo.

  97:  Echo  script.bat import c:\import\MySearchScopes.reg

  98:  echo.

  99:  pause

 100:  echo.

That’s it. I hope that you will find this little tool and information useful.

Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

NOTE! I believe in the right for freedom of speech and personal opinion and are against censorship, so feel free to tell me what you think and let me and others hear your opinion on this subject, but please avoid using the f-word and s-word as much as you possibly can, because at the end of the day this blog exists for the purpose of useful exchanges of thoughts, ideas and opinions and not as a valve for your accumulated anger and frustration. Get a shrink for that! Thanks.

« In Case You Forgot Adobe Photoshop at Home, don???t worry! - What is Your Favorite Cirque du Soleil Show? »