How to Increase the Message Size Limit for Full-Text Indexing

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If you need to index messages with attachments larger than 16 MB, you must increase the message size limit for full-text indexing. To increase this size limit, perform the following procedure.

Before You Begin

This procedure is one of six steps that you should perform when optimizing full-text indexing. For more details about this entire process, see "How to Optimize Full-Text Indexing."

The Microsoft Search service does not need to be running when you edit the registry key. However, if you edit the registry key while the Microsoft Search service is running, you must stop and restart the service after you make the change for it to take effect.

Warning

Incorrectly editing the registry can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Problems resulting from editing the registry incorrectly may not be able to be resolved. Before editing the registry, back up any valuable data.

Procedure

To increase the message size limit

  1. Start Registry Editor.

  2. In Registry Editor, set the following registry key to 4,000 MB:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Gathering Manager\MaxDownloadSize

Note

On a cluster, before you change the MaxDownloadSize registry key, make sure the MSSearch resource is online. Also, make sure you are editing the correct node by using Cluster Administrator to verify the node on which the group is running. After you change the registry key, use Cluster Administrator to restart the MSSearch resource by taking it offline, and then bringing it back online.