It's been a very long time since I used Blender. The UI update appears to have changed enough that I no longer recognise the workflow.
Is there still an equivalent to the "space key brings up an everything menu"? I couldn't seem to trigger than when I was playing around with the new stuff.
When you first run a new version of Blender a popup should ask if you want to use space for search. If you already made it past the welcome screen, the user preferences (keymap tab) has an easy toggle for changing the space bar behavior.
