Verify that SQL Server Full-Text Searching is Working Correctly for Your Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 Sites

If users are having trouble searching your Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site, first make sure that you have set up the site to be searchable. You can set up full-text search on your Windows SharePoint Services site by installing Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and configuring Windows SharePoint Services to use SQL Server full-text search. For information about installing Windows SharePoint Services and connecting to SQL Server, see the "Deployment Scenarios" section of the Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide on TechNet (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=103944\&clcid=0x409).

If users still cannot search the site after you set up full-text searching by using SQL Server, use the steps in this article to troubleshoot your search settings. Search might not work because the full-text searching catalogs are not being created or are not being populated with data from your SharePoint sites. Symptoms of this problem might be that the Search box does not appear on your sites, or that the search results list is blank or does not contain a document that you know exists on a site.

By using the steps in the following sections, you can verify that full-text searching is configured correctly in both SQL Server and Windows SharePoint Services, and that your SharePoint sites are being crawled and indexed. For more information about setting up search for your SharePoint site, see Managing and Configuring Search (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=103945\&clcid=0x409) in the Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide.

Verify that full-text searching is configured correctly in SQL Server

1. On your server running SQL Server, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server, and then click Enterprise Manager.

2. In the left pane, expand the Microsoft SQL Servers node.

3. Expand the SQL Server Group node, and then expand the server instance that is running your SharePoint databases.

4. Expand the Databases node.

5. Right-click the Northwind database, click New, and then click New Full-Text Catalog.

   If the Northwind database is not installed, you can use any other available database.

6. In the Name box, type a name to use for the catalog (such as "test"), and then click OK.

7. In the right pane, double-click Full-Text Catalogs.

Your new full-text catalog should be listed. If the catalog was created without any errors, full-text searching is working correctly in SQL Server. If there were errors creating this test catalog, there were probably errors creating the catalogs for your SharePoint sites. The SQL Server Full-Text service must be working before full-text searches in your SharePoint sites can work. For more information about configuring full-text searching, see "Administering Full-Text Features Using SQL Enterprise Manager" in SQL Server 2000 Books Online. Contact Microsoft Support if there are issues that you cannot resolve.

After you have verified that the catalog was created successfully, you can delete the test catalog.

1. Right-click the catalog, and then click Delete.

2. On the confirmation message, click Yes.

Reconfigure full-text searching in

If full-text searching is not working for your SharePoint sites, but the SQL Server Full-Text catalogs can be built without errors, perform these steps to reconfigure full-text searching in Windows SharePoint Services.

1. On your server running Windows SharePoint Services, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.

2. In the Component Configuration section, click Configure full-text search.

3. Clear the Enable full-text search and index component check box and then click OK.

   Wait for the catalog to be deleted. When the catalog has been deleted, the main page of SharePoint Central Administration appears.

4. In the Component Configuration section, click Configure full-text search.

5. Select the Enable full-text search and index component check box and then click OK.

   Wait for the catalog to be created. When the catalog has been created, the main page of SharePoint Central Administration appears.

Note that it will take several minutes to rebuild the catalog (depending on the size and number of sites), so wait several minutes before following the steps to verify the catalog in SQL Server.

Verify that the catalog exists in SQL Server and is being populated with data from your SharePoint sites

Use these steps to verify that the full-text searching catalog has been successfully created for your SharePoint sites, and that full-text searching is crawling documents and adding information to the catalog.

1. On your server running SQL Server, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Microsoft SQL Server, and then click Enterprise Manager.

2. In the left pane, expand the Microsoft SQL Servers node.

3. Expand the SQL Server Group node, and then expand the server instance that is running your SharePoint databases.

4. Expand the Databases node.

5. Expand the content database for your SharePoint installation, for example, STS_contoso_1.

6. Select Full-Text Catalogs.

   You should see the catalog that was created for your SharePoint sites, for example, ix_STS_contoso_1. If the catalog is not listed, contact Microsoft Support.

7. Look in the Status column and verify that the status is either Population in progress or Idle.

   Either of these statuses indicates that the full-text searching processes are running as expected. If neither of these statuses are listed, contact Microsoft Support.