Exchange 2013 Seaching for Numbers Within Attachments
In Exchange 2013, we are able to obtain search results for attachments that contain specific words. However, if we search for numbers that are inside attachments (such as Excel), we don't get any results. For testing, we emailed an Excel document with a unique word and number. Later, we were able to search and find the attachment based upon the word, but not based upon the six digit number in the Excel document. Is there a way to have Exchange 2013 index numbers in documents? We have a lot of invoices where invoice numbers only appear in the Excel document and not in the email itself. We need to be able to search based upon the invoice numbers within the Excel documents.
May 29th, 2014 8:28pm

What is the command you are running to find the desired word and/or # within the excel sheet?
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May 29th, 2014 11:25pm

In Outlook 2013, we enter an invoice number in the search bar and search all folders.
May 30th, 2014 4:15pm

Ok so that is not Exchange doing the search that is the end user execution via Outlook doing the search based upon the indexing system and to be honest I don't think that's possible to do via Outlook as all my testing failed. 

Are you trying to accomplish this for user to execute or an Admin across the Exchange server or particular users mailbox?

NOTE: If you are trying to this as an email admin then our DigiScope tool will do the trick

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May 30th, 2014 5:31pm

The end user is searching his mailbox through Outlook. Outlook is not caching. When we export to PST and attach the PST file to Outlook and wait overnight for the indexing to run on the local PC, the search works correctly, finding results for searches on invoice numbers and text strings. Obviously, this is not a desired configuration.

Are you saying the Exchange 2013 search (fast search) will not search for numbers in attachments? Would a workaround be to use caching (.ost file) for this user?

May 30th, 2014 7:33pm

I am saying my research &  testing didn't turn up a method to obtain a successful search of #'s within an excel sheet via Outlook.   I am still looking but so far nothing.   Are you attempting to do it like it says in this article or??

http://medicine.yale.edu/web/about/news/article.aspx?id=4336

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May 30th, 2014 8:04pm

I get an Article Not Found error on the link to medicine.yale.edu site, I get to the site, but the article is not found.
May 30th, 2014 9:08pm

Hmm odd, the link works here so only things I can think of are;

  1. Firewall restriction?
  2. Browser issues?  perhaps try alternate browser...
  3. Copy and paste the URL to ensure its being properly translated
  4. Give your machine the 3 finger salute and then try try again (Reboot)

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May 30th, 2014 9:26pm

yale must have been having issues, the web site opens fine now. Yes, when searching as they indicate, we have the same results, no attachments containing the numbers.

May 30th, 2014 10:01pm

Sorry wish I could help.  Definitely let me know if you find a resolution
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May 31st, 2014 4:34am

It appears Exchange 2013 does not index numbers in attachments? We just finished a migration from Exchange 2010 to 2013. We can no longer search for numbers in attachments. Users are starting to figure this out and our not happy... 

Nothing has changed in our setup besides the version of Exchange. 

Still investigating at the moment.

Sam. 

December 15th, 2014 4:56pm

It appears to be only Excel files in my testing. PDFs, DOCs and others seem to index numbers. 

Testing search in outlook (non-cached mode) and OWA. 

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December 15th, 2014 7:19pm

You should definitely ensure that the #'s within the Excel sheet are seen as #'s and not text  https://support.microsoft.com/kb/291047?wa=wsignin1.0
December 15th, 2014 7:33pm

Why would/should that matter??? If i have numbers in a sheet formated as text I would expect those to be indexed as well. Infact, cells that contain both numbers and letters, for example: lkjlk234234 are indexed, and searchable in Outlook. 

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December 15th, 2014 11:38pm

Well you said it wasn't indexing #'s within excel and as the article points out sum and other actions done against #'s see as text don't sum/calculate properly.    Now that is interesting that numbers and letters get indexed.   Still I would check the #'s that are not getting picked up by the index and see what format they are in since that may help you narrow the issue 
December 15th, 2014 11:42pm

I opened up a support case. Ill let MS figure this one out.
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December 15th, 2014 11:52pm

The Support case I opened resulted in this KB. 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3031789

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, in order to optimize performance and improve the occurrences of a search instance, numbers in Excel attachments are not indexed and parsed. This is an expected behavior.

Our users are not happy with this. We are mostly VDI with Outlook (Online Mode) and OWA. Thanks Microsoft, at least make it a setting... 

July 23rd, 2015 10:06am

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