Date: October 28, 2012
By: Mike Khzouz (Mike@bostonIT.com)

OWA Search won't work on Exchange 2010 SP1 and SP2

When you search in Outlook Web Access, the search doesn't bring up anything.

One cause of the issue could be that the index folder on the Exchange server needs to be rebuilt . Under Services make sure that the "Microsoft Exchange Indexer Service" is enabled.

You can rebuild the Search Catalog Data folder by stopping the "Microsoft Exchange Indexer Service" under Windows Services, go to the Exchange mailbox Index folder where in a default installation would be inside
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Mailbox\Mailbox Database xxxxxxxx\
Rename/delete the folder named CatalogData-xxxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx. Now go and start the "Microsoft Exchange Indexer Service" again. Indexing will start rebuilding again.

You might need to wait until it's all done. You will see that the size of this folder is growing. In my case I had to wait for about 2:30 hours and then OWA Search started working again.



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