How to configure full-text indexing on mailbox stores in Exchange 2000 (319436)

SUMMARY

This step-by-step article describes how to configure full-text indexing on mailbox stores. Mailboxes are repositories for messages, documents, calendar items, and task lists for all of the users in your organization. Exchange 2000 has the capacity to index the full text of all messages in any mailbox store. If you configure full-text indexing, users can quickly search for any word or phrase that occurs in the body of any item in their own mailbox.

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Requirements

The following list outlines the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that you need:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• Active Directory
• Exchange 2000 with SP1
• Microsoft Outlook 2002, Microsoft Outlook 2000, or Microsoft Outlook 98 with the Quick Fix Engineering patch

This article assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:

• Exchange System Manager
• Indexing concepts, such as noise words, catalog (corpus), and incremental and full populations

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How to Set System Resource Usage

Before you start the indexing process, configure the amount of system resources that indexing will consume. When you do so, the priority level of the indexing process is altered to increase or decrease the chance that this process will be pre-empted by other processes that may be running on the server.

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Double-click the Servers icon.
3. Right-click the server that hosts the storage group that contains the relevant mailbox store that you want to configure, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Full-Text Indexing tab, and then click either Minimum, Low, High or Maximum under System resource usage, according to the priority level that you place on the indexing process. The default setting is Low.
5. Click OK.

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How to Create the Full-Text Index

To create a full-text index on users' mailboxes, create a separate index for each mailbox store. You must first decide the relevant mailbox store that contains the mailboxes that you want to index. To create the full-text index:

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Double-click the Servers icon.
3. Click the server that hosts the storage group that contains the relevant mailbox store that you want to configure.
4. Expand Storage Group Name (the default group is "First Storage Group"), right-click Mailbox Store (ServerName), and then click Create Full-Text Index.
   
   The default path for the catalog is displayed:

   C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\ExchangeServer_Servername\Projects

5. Either click OK to accept this location or type another path.
6. After the process has finished, expand the Full-Text Indexing object under Mailbox Store.
   
   Six entries are displayed. Confirm that Index State states "There is no full-text index for this store" and Last Build Time states "This catalog was never built".

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How to Populate the Index

When you populate the index, the indexing process starts, which produces a list of words that are held in the mailbox store database. These words are cross-referenced to the messages in which those words exist. To populate the index:

1. Right-click the Mailbox store object, and then click Start Full Population.
   
   You receive a message that states that the process will take some time. Populate indexes when the Exchange 2000 computer is not being heavily used.
2. Click Yes when you are prompted to continue to start the population process.
   
   You will see activity on the Exchange 2000 computer while the index is created. After the activity has stopped, the new indexing statistics are displayed. This process may take a few minutes up to several hours, depending on the number of documents to be processed and the level of processing that is assigned to the indexing service.

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How to Check the Index State

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Double-click the Servers icon.
3. Click the server that hosts the storage group that contains the relevant mailbox store that you want to configure.
4. Expand Storage Group Name (the default group is "First Storage Group"), and then click Mailbox Store (ServerName).
5. Click the Full-Text Indexing object under Mailbox store (Servername).
6. Confirm that Index State is set to Idle and that values are displayed in the Number of Documents Indexed box and the Index Size (MB) box.
   
   NOTE: If Index State is displayed as "Crawling", an incremental or full population is in progress.

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How to Configure Indexing and Allow Searches

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Double-click the Servers icon.
3. Click the server that hosts the storage group that contains the relevant mailbox store that you want to configure.
4. Expand Storage Group Name (the default group is "First Storage Group"), right-click Mailbox Store (ServerName), click Properties, and then click the Full-Text Indexing tab.
5. Click the time that you want to perform an incremental update in the Update Interval box, and then click OK.
   
   Alternatively, click Customize, click the day that you want to update the index in the left column, click the time that you want to update the index on the top row, and then click OK.
   
   NOTE: You can configure the schedule to display either hour slots or 15-minute slots. To do so, click the appropriate setting under Detail View.
6. Configure the settings for the rebuild interval.
   
   NOTE: A full rebuild is run one time a week by default.
7. Click This index is currently available for searching by clients.
   
   If you do not do click this setting, full-text searches are not carried out against this index.
8. Click OK.

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How to Confirm That You Configured Full-Text Indexing Correctly

The Index State statistics verify if indexing has been successful. However, to confirm that users can use the indexing functionality:

1. Log on to Outlook, right-click the Inbox folder, and then click Advanced Find.
2. Type a non-noise word in the Search for the word(s) box, and then click Subject field and message body in the In box.
3. Click Find Now.
   
   Messages with the requested word are displayed in the bottom pane.

NOTE: To complete this procedure successfully, you must perform either an incremental population or a full population of the index after the relevant messages are added to the public folder. Also, noise words like "the" and "or" are excluded from the catalog because they occur too often.

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Troubleshooting

Administrators often forget to select the This index is currently available for searching by clients check box. Outlook does not make use of the full-text index for message body searches unless you select this check box.

When you test the index, if you add a new message, and then try to search for words in that message, you must repopulate the index first. For this type of testing, perform the procedure described in the "How to Create the Full-Text Index" section but click Start Incremental Population instead of Start Full Population in step 4.

Be aware of the effects of allocating system resources for rebuilding indexes. If you use a lower System Resource Usage setting, the lower setting does not necessarily mean that the server is less busy while it carries out a repopulation. If you select a lower setting, other tasks can pre-empt the repopulation process more easily. If processor resources on the server are not being used, when you regenerate the index, all of those resources are used even though the System Resource Usage setting is set to Minimum.

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