Content indexing is enabled for this public folder store but updates are not scheduled

[This topic is intended to address a specific issue called out by the Exchange Server Analyzer Tool. You should apply it only to systems that have had the Exchange Server Analyzer Tool run against them and are experiencing that specific issue. The Exchange Server Analyzer Tool, available as a free download, remotely collects configuration data from each server in the topology and automatically analyzes the data. The resulting report details important configuration issues, potential problems, and nondefault product settings. By following these recommendations, you can achieve better performance, scalability, reliability, and uptime. For more information about the tool or to download the latest versions, see "Microsoft Exchange Analyzers" at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=34707.]  

Topic Last Modified: 2010-07-21

The Microsoft® Exchange Best Practices Analyzer Tool queries the Active Directory® directory service to determine the value for the msExchCIAvailable attribute of each public folder store. The value of this attribute indicates whether content indexing has been enabled for the public folder store. A value of "True" indicates that a content index exists for a public folder store and that the Exchange System Manager setting of "This index is currently available for searching by clients" is selected. A value of "False" indicates that a content index exists for a public folder store, but the Exchange System Manager setting of "This index is currently available for searching by clients" is cleared. A value of "<Not Set>" indicates that a content index does not exist for the public folder store.

The Analyzer tool also queries Active Directory to determine the value for the msExchCIRebuildSchedule attribute of each public folder store. The value of this attribute indicates the rebuild schedule settings for the content index. This attribute is stored as an octet string that has 82 pairs of hexadecimal values.

If the Exchange Server Analyzer finds the value of the msExchCIAvailable attribute set to "True" but the octet string value for the msExchCIRebuildSchedule attribute translates to "Never run," a warning is displayed.

The recommended best practice for setting the update interval is to schedule incremental updates at least one time every day. You may want to schedule more frequent updates because the index is only as current as the last time it was populated. Indexes that are not regularly updated can produce inaccurate and out-of-date results.

You should also consider the time that is required to complete an incremental population. For example, a typical schedule sets incremental updates at the beginning of each hour. However, if the update lasts more than an hour, the next incremental population begins at the start of the following hour.

Generally, if the public folder store is 6 gigabyes (GB) or smaller, you can perform incremental updates hourly. If the store is larger than 6 GB, or if the server has high memory usage, you may want to update the index less frequently.

To set the full-text indexing Update Interval on a specific public folder store

  1. Open Exchange System Manager.

  2. Expand Administrative Groups, expand your administrative group, expand Servers, expand your server, expand your storage group, right-click your public folder store, and then click Properties. If the Administrative Groups node is not displayed in Exchange System Manager, expand Servers, right-click your server, and then click Properties.

  3. On the Full-Text Indexing tab, select an option other than Never run.

  4. If you select Use custom schedule, click Customize, set your own custom schedule, and then click OK.

  5. Click Apply.

For more information about full-text indexing for Exchange Server, see Best Practices for Deploying Full-Text Indexing.