SOLVED

Sharepoint 2016 no search results.

Copper Contributor

I have used sharegate desktop to move all sites lists and libraries from a SharePoint 2010 site to a new 2016 installation.  I believed that search initially worked but then at some point stopped returning results.  I can never get any results.  I have followed all the instructions I have found.  I have a weekly full crawl running.  It does find quite a few errors that I have yet to resolve.  I have seen items in the crawl logs that a specific item in a list was successfully crawled but still I get no results searching for an part of any column in that list.  I have re-indexed, re-full crawled, the site is set to return results, the list is set to return results, ...  I and searching a site administrator.  Any more suggestions.  My crawl says it have nearly 300,000 successes . I tried searching for *.  Never any results

8 Replies

@mikjac21549are you sure the account you're performing your searches with (still) has permissions to the content that was crawled successfully?

@Paul Pascha 

 

I am not completely sure which account is performing the searching.  How do I find that?  How do I check it's permissions.  There is a lot more that i don't know than what I do know about all this.  

 

Thank you so much for your response

@mikjac21549that account is just the account you're logged in with. In other words, are you able to browse to the content you're searching for?

@Paul Pascha 

 

yes I can open a list, look at an item, try to search for an item that I see, and it can't find it.

@mikjac21549So you don't receive an error message after performing your search, just an empty results page? Is this the same when you search from inside the library/list instead of using the site wide search? Did you take a look at the logs on the server? (Event log, ULS log). Are you able to find other content that was not part of your migration? 

 

Few more thoughts / hints:

  • Does your Query Processing component show a green checkmark in Central Admin / Search Service Application Settings / Search Application Topology 
  • Are your searches being performed against the correct Result Source?
  • Do you have any query rules configured that might have impact on your search results?
  • Have you 
  • I assume you have only 1 Search Service Application configured in your Farm and it is associated to your Web Application via the correct Service Application Proxy group.

 

 

 

 

@Paul Pascha 

 

Thanks for your help. 

1.  No errors just no results.

2.  no search ever returns anything.

3. on the front end server the Event log shows some information issues with trying to install a language proof with error = 0

 

"Windows Installer reconfigured the product. Product Name: Microsoft Server Proof (Arabic) 2016. Product Version: 16.0.4351.1000. Product Language: 1025. Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation. Reconfiguration success or error status: 0."

 

then a followed by warning saying failed to connect to server

 

4.  The ULS logs are over my head.  I downloaded the ULSviewer and it crashed after starting to load the info.  I viewed the files with notepad but I'm not sure which file and what I'm looking for.

 

5.  How do I know what result source I'm searching against?

6. no query rules

7. 1 search service app and no proxy.  do I need a proxy?

 

can I kill all search and reconfigure?  delete my content source and recreate?

 

best response confirmed by mikjac21549 (Copper Contributor)
Solution

@mikjac21549 no proxy? A proxy should exist. You could try creating one using PowerShell 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-server/new-spenterprisesearchserviceap...

 

Alternatively, if you haven't configured your search service application a lot or you know exactly what you did you could as well recreate your search service application too. I wonder what way you provisioned your search service application. If you create one using Central Administration the proxy should be automatically created. If you used PowerShell you probably missed some steps...

@Paul Pascha I deleted and re-created the search service,  and that seemed to resolve the issue. 

 

I still don't have a proxy.  I thought that was only used for search other content outside of my local sites.  

 

thanks for hanging with me.

1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by mikjac21549 (Copper Contributor)
Solution

@mikjac21549 no proxy? A proxy should exist. You could try creating one using PowerShell 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-server/new-spenterprisesearchserviceap...

 

Alternatively, if you haven't configured your search service application a lot or you know exactly what you did you could as well recreate your search service application too. I wonder what way you provisioned your search service application. If you create one using Central Administration the proxy should be automatically created. If you used PowerShell you probably missed some steps...

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