Can't find FULLTEXT index matching the column list

I'm getting the error:

"Can't find FULLTEXT index matching the column list"

I have found that the column list in my query must EXACTLY match the column list in my FULL TEXT index.

So if I want to query like this:

SELECT FileID,'File'
FROM FileMetaData
WHERE MATCH (FileText,OrigAuthor,LastModAuthor,Description,Custom5Value)
AGAINST ('one for the money')

. . .I must create my fulltext index like this:

CREATE TABLE FileMetadata (
  FileMetadataID int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  FileID int(11) NULL,
  FolderID int(11) NULL,
  ProjectID int(11) NULL,
  FileText text NULL,
  FileTextPage int(11) NULL,
  OrigAuthor varchar(50) NULL, #mandatory metadata field
  LastModAuthor varchar(50) NULL, #mandatory metadata field
  Description varchar(100) NULL, #mandatory metadata field
  Custom1Value varchar(50) NULL,
  Custom2Value varchar(50) NULL,
  Custom3Value varchar(50) NULL,
  Custom4Value varchar(50) NULL,
  Custom5Value varchar(50) NULL,
  FULLTEXT KEY idxFileMetaData (FileText,OrigAuthor,LastModAuthor,Description,Custom5Value)
);

. . .but this is not practical for me, because any combination of those fields can be searchable by a user. My UI allows users to select which fields to search against. If their selection happens to not correspond with the exact fields as specified in the fulltext key, I get the error mentioned above. Even if I include EVERY text-like column in the table, in the fulltext index, if the user wants to search only against a subset of those columns, the error will result.

It's hard for me to believe that MySQL 4.1 could possibly be this inflexible. . .? I must be doing something wrong. How can I include all text-like columns in my fulltext index, but still allow users to search against any desired subset of those columns?

Or is there some trick for an alternative? I guess if i had to query against all columns every time, is there a way for me to exclude records that matched against columns that the user did not want to include in the search?