Common Issues and Explanation andor Resolution

Common Issues and Explanation and/or Resolution

This section lists issues to be aware of when working with the features of SharePoint that deal with indexing, searching, and finding information.

Information Added to Areas Is Not Being Returned in Search Results

When adding a listing to an area, there is a setting to include the item in search results. If this isn't checked, the listing will not be returned in search results. Another possible reason is that if the area is configured to require approval for listings, it may not have been approved yet. A third reason might be that the index has not yet been updated to include the new listing.

Crawling Content Is Much Slower Than Expected

In some situations, crawling content in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 may take much longer than anticipated even though there is no apparent disk, CPU, or network bottleneck. This situation may exist when a proxy server is configured in Microsoft Internet Explorer but not configured for the search service in SharePoint Portal Server 2003. If no proxy server is configured in SharePoint Portal Server 2003, the default access account uses the proxy server settings configured in Internet Explorer. To remedy this situation, on the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server, remove the proxy settings configured in Internet Explorer and then restart the Microsoft SharePointPS Search service.

Inability to Create and Manage Content Indexes

To create, start, stop, and manage index content updates, advanced search administration mode must be enabled. If these options are not displayed, advanced administration mode probably has not been enabled. Refer to the section "Using Advanced Search Administration Mode to Enhance Search Flexibility" earlier in the chapter for details.

Items in a Content Source Are Not Included in Search Result

This problem could be due to a number of reasons as follows:

• The account set up to crawl the content source does not have the proper permissions to access the source.

• When the content source was created, the option to create a full index was not selected and/or the crawl process has not yet finished.

• Separate index and search servers are being used, but the index server could not propagate the index to the search server. There could be several reasons for not being able to propagate the index including security/access rights or lack of disk space. If the index server cannot to propagate the index, the content source is not available for searching.

Refer to the sections "Using Content Sources to Include Information in Search Results" and "Facilitating Search with Content Indexes" both earlier in the chapter for details about resolving these types of issues.

Windows SharePoint Services Does Not Display the Search Box

To have search capabilities on a Windows SharePoint Services site, full-text search must be enabled. If it is not enabled, the search box will not be displayed. Refer to the section "Enabling Windows SharePoint Services Search" earlier in the chapter for details.