SharePoint HELP content is not indexed

Written by Administrator

Friday, 12 February 2010 11:06

It might happen that you have missing Windows SharePoint Services Help Search on your MOSS Farm service list. And you cannot search HELP content.
Before you start be aware of the bug in MOSS - when the service is stopped, it is labeled as "Windows SharePoint Services Search". Once the service has been started,the label changed to "Windows SharePoint Services Help Search"

Here is small overview about those two services, which one is used for what.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides two search services: Office SharePoint Server Search and Windows SharePoint Services Help Search. Each of these services can be used to crawl, index, and query content, and each service uses a separate index.
The Office SharePoint Server Search service is based on the search service that is provided with earlier versions of SharePoint Products & Technologies, but with many improvements. You should use the Office SharePoint Server Search service to crawl and index all content that you want to be searchable (other than the Help system).
The Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service is the same service provided by Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, although in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 it is called the Windows SharePoint Services Search service. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 uses this service to index site content, index Help content, and serve queries.
As its name implies, in Office SharePoint Server 2007 the purpose of the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service is to enable searching of the Help system that is built into Office SharePoint Server 2007.
Because the Windows SharePoint Services Help Search service uses an index that is separate from the other search service, users’ queries in the Search box for the Help system return hits for only Help content. If you do not want users to be able to search the Help system, you do not need to start this service.

In summary, Windows SharePoint Services Search in WSS is used for indexation of whole content, in MOSS it is used only to index HELP content. UNLESS you set server to the WSS option in the content DB (except the admin DB)(see image bellow) this is where issues might start.

Important:If you have any content DB assigned to be crawled by WSS Search, then this service would appear as "Windows SharePoint Services Search"

If this service crawls help content then the service would appear as “Windows SharePoint Services Help Search”

Check the below screenshot:

Symptoms:

Your WSS_ Search_DB is huge as there can be one or more of your content DB that is being crawled by WSS Search. You will be able to find this by getting into “Central Administration > Application Management > Content Databases” and check the Search Server setting for each content database.

It is recommended you to use the “Office SharePoint Server Search” for all the Content Database in a MOSS farm.

“Windows SharePoint Services Search” should be used only to index help. If it is indexing only help then the Service will be running with the name “Windows SharePoint Services Help Search”

You can do that by making sure you DONT HAVE assigned any server in the WSS search settings on the image above, in ANY content DB(except admin db)

Important: The “SharePoint Central administration v3” Content DB will be always assigned to “Windows SharePoint Services search”. So please don’t make any changes in the content DB settings. You will have to stop and start the Windows SharePoint Services search service with a new DB. It will automatically reset the content DB of Windows SharePoint Services search to heklp content. It will crawl after 5 minutes if the index schedule is set to run every 5 minutes

When you detach and reattach the DB, it is set back to be crawled only by Office SharePoint Server Search and this causes Help search become broken and you are not able to search the help.

To fix this problem, you just have to stop the “Windows SharePoint Services Search” and start it again. (you have to create new DB for that)

If you want to go deeper and check which sites are crawled by WSS query the search db with following:

Select * from MSSCrawlHostList

this will give you output of sites crawled by WSS.

To check when it was crawled last time: to see when issue occured, query following:

select top 10 CrawlId, StartTime, EndTime, Status from MSSCrawlHistory order by crawlid desc

That is all, you now know more about WSS search in MOSS that you wanted ;)

Cheers KbNk;