In this previous post, I detailed how to ‘customise’ the OOTB SharePoint Search Box control – by including delegate properties.   This works for MOST scenarios – but sometimes, you need more control (no pun intended).

For other scenarios – or if you can’t get it working/sand-boxed/etc – you can simply REPLACE the Delegate – with the actual SearchBoxEx control – within the Master Page.

To do this – you need to do the following :

• Open the Master Page (eg. v4.master) – in SharePoint Designer – or Visual Studio
• Add the following to the top of the page – to allow you to reference the Search Control :

<%@ Register Tagprefix="SharePointWebControls" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" %>

Then, you can replace the delegate control :

• Do a search (CTRL-F) for “SmallSearchInputBox”
• Replace the following :

<SharePoint:DelegateControl ID="DelegateControl3" runat="server" ControlId="SmallSearchInputBox" Version="4"/>

• With this markup :

<SharePointWebControls:SearchBoxEx ID="SmallSearchBox" runat="server" ShowAdvancedSearch="false" QueryPromptString="Enter Search Term…" DropDownMode="HideDD_NoScope" SearchResultPageURL="/_layouts/osssearchresults.aspx" ScopeDisplayGroupName="" FrameType="None" DisplaySubmittedSearch="false" />

Once you have this in place, you can change any specific property for “SearchBoxEx” :

• Eg. QueryPromptString = Enter Search Term

See MSDN for a list of properties you can change/update – for the SearchBoxEx control.

Lastly – make sure you save/check-in the updated Master Page.

It should look identical – but you can now change the properties within the Master Page itself.

Good luck – this approach certainly worked for me !