Forum Discussion
Content Search & Unindexed Items
Recently, Unindexed Items have started to appear in our content searches. I believe these are most likely encryted documents? Please correct if I am mistaken. I would like to ensure that the Search & Delete process outlined here will not delete these messages.
Example search with Unindexed Items returned:
I FINALLY got an answer from MS Support. The purge function will never delete an unindexed item. They also have removed the ability to exlude unindexed items from search due to legal reasons. You can exclude unindexed on export, but not on search anymore like you used to be able to.
The following resouces detail the changes.
- Unindexed items : https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Unindexed-items-in-Content-Search-in-Office-365-d1691de4-ca0d-446f-a0d0-373a4fc8487b
- Creating a content search : https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Run-a-Content-Search-in-the-Office-365-Security-Compliance-Center-61852fd9-fe8a-4880-a339-cb19ed3bff4a?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#create
- Search & Purge : https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Search-for-and-delete-email-messages-in-your-Office-365-organization-Admin-Help-3526fd06-b45f-445b-aed4-5ebd37b3762a#moreinfo
7 Replies
Encrytped or password-protected is a common scenario, unsupported file types is another one. There's a detailed article on the subject here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Unindexed-items-in-Content-Search-in-Office-365-d1691de4-ca0d-446f-a0d0-373a4fc8487b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
VasilMichev I guess the problem I am running into is that I have lost the ability to exclude unindexed items as described in the article you mentioned. Now I am afraid to run the powershell commands to remove the items searched for from the users mailboxes because I do not want to remove those unindexed items that I cannot exclude from the search.
When you run an Action against Content Search, you have the option to specify whether unindexed items are included in the scope. If you are doing this via PowerShell, the "-Scope IndexedItemsOnly" parameter is what you need. More info here: https://technet.microsoft.com/EN-US/library/a3a2897c-07a8-41d6-99cd-f2440613fbce(EXCHG.160).aspx
Plus, you can always run the Export action first, so you have a backup copy if something goes wrong.
