Issues with full text search on Exchange 2003 / Outlook 2003
Hi all,I've got an interesting issue at one of our customers. Their environment is based on Exchange 2003 SP2 and Outllok 2003 SP3.They have the full text index activated on one of their mailbox stores which hosts a central mailbox which is shared by all the people and which is updated 3 times a day.We have on working user which got e.g. 272 results when he searches for "PAG-992-1C". All other users just got 3 results for the same search string.If we just search for "PAG" all users get the same amount of hits.It's the same issue for example when we search for "0912/033" and just "0912".Are there any known issues / limitations with these special charakters like "-" or "/" - and if - why is it working for one of the users?First I thougt it was the Outlook Cache Mode, but as this is just a additional mailbox, Outlook should connect directly to Exchange. And even if we connect directly with Cache Mode disabled - the issue is still the same.On the other side - we tested also with OWA - there everything is working as expected, meaning this must be some sort of client related issue.Any hints on that?Thanks,Heiko
February 1st, 2010 12:47pm

I've got a few isolated reports of what appears to be the same problem, involving Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 clients. Outlook search misses some messages if the client is in cached mode. Take them out of cached mode, and the missing messages show up.I've also seen it reported that a Windows search on the same machine will find items that an Outlook search misses.
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February 1st, 2010 5:16pm

Thanks for your feedback, unfortunately as already stated even Outlook without Cache Mode doesn't show up the right number of results. Only within OWA it is working. Any other hints on that?
February 2nd, 2010 4:37pm

Does running a cleanviews on that mailbox have any effect?
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February 2nd, 2010 5:05pm

Bad news - no change till now.
February 4th, 2010 9:33pm

Hello Heiko,1. Rebuild full-text index catalog and see if that issue gets resolved2. Move the mailbox in question to another store and then do a rebuild Arun Kumar | MCSE - 2K3 + Messaging | ITIL-F V3
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February 4th, 2010 10:57pm

Hi Arun, the Index was rebuild several times - doesn't help - or better said the index is fine as it works perfectly via OWA. I assume some sort of client side problem, but the documentation regarding to the full text search is a bit rare, especially for the client side. Heiko
February 5th, 2010 5:26pm

Have “Windows Search” been installed on the problematic users’ machine? Could the issue be reproduced if you put one of the three problematic users to a test machine, and then recreate their mail profile and add that centralized mailbox?James Luo TechNet Subscriber Support (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/ms788697.aspx) If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tngfb@microsoft.com
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February 8th, 2010 7:53am

In at least one of the reports I have of this problem, Windows Search has been installed.
February 8th, 2010 8:00am

Nope - there is no "Windows Desktop Search" installed on the machines. Even testing with a complete new test machine does not show any better results.
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February 8th, 2010 6:42pm

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