SP not finding/returning all refinable properties

[xls0288]

Dear Community,

I am running into a strange problem with PnP Modern Search for which I cannot find a solution. Would appreciate any input or suggestions. Problem is as follows:

I have set up a search page on my company's SPO site using PnP Modern Search. It is meant to search for documents stored in various libraries on that site. However, when I run the search it does not find/register some items and metadata-- seemingly at random. For example, when I set the vertical in my search page to display one library, it will return 22 documents when the library actually contains 33. Of those 22 documents, some are missing metadata. For instance, Document A will have a value for the site column called 'DocumentType' but Document B (in the same library) will not show any value. This means I cannot correctly filter the results.

If I look at debug view, Document B's value is 'null' in the relevant 'RefinableStringXX' field. If I look at the document in the SP Online library though, the item has a value in that column and all metadata is filled out like normal. Any idea why the search is not picking up only these certain documents/metadata? It happens in all libraries on the site.

Steps for re-creating problem:

1. Create libraries in site.
2. Create custom site columns.
3. Populate libraries with documents and accompanying metadata in the custom site columns.
4. Set up PnP Modern Search.
5. Map respective crawled properties from custom site columns to Refinable properties.
6. Wait 48+ hours for reindexing.
7. Set up Modern Search page in the site with verticals and filters. Select all relevant properties, connect the webparts, etc.
8. Enable debug mode and look through any search results.
9. RefinableString/Date properties for many items are 'null'.
10. Not all items from libraries appear in search results.

I tried asking the developer community of PnP Search and they redirected me here. I can also provide more information if needed. Thank you in advance!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

@xls0288 

Is Content Approval enabled in your library? If it's enabled then Search will crawl only documents which are approved.

Another thing you can try by getting same search result using SharePoint Search Query Tool and verify whether here you are getting value in Refinable Managed Properties or not? so that you can at least have a idea whether it's PnP Search issue or crawling issue?

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Hope it will helpful to you and if so then Please mark my response as Best Response & Like to help others in this community

[#3]

Kalpesh,
Thank you for this. The Query Tool was super helpful in troubleshooting this. The issue turned out to be on the SP end of things, not PNP Search. Metadata from one column ended up mapped to multiple properties... but the reindexing is yielding more results now.

Cheers to you for the help :)