Disable search indexing Exchange

By default, Exchange Search is enabled for all new mailbox databases. It does not need extra configuration. But, if you want to stop Exchange Search from indexing mailbox content, you can disable it. You can disable indexing on individual mailbox databases or an entire Exchange server.

When you migrate users to a new database, I recommend disabling the search index. Disable indexing on that specific database or entire Exchange server. Don’t forget to enable search indexing after you finish the migration.

Check search indexing on database

Run Exchange Management Shell as administrator. Run the following command.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name      IndexEnabled
----      ------------
DB3-2016         False
DB1-2016         False
DB6-2016          True
DB9-2016         False
DB20-2016        False
DB4-2016         False
DB12-2016        False

The database DB6-2016 is showing as IndexEnabled True. It means that indexing is enabled on that database. If it shows False, it means that indexing is disabled.

If you want to know the indexing status of a particular database, run the following command. Note: I want to show you how it looks when indexing is enabled or disabled.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase "DB6-2016" | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name     IndexEnabled
----     ------------
DB6-2016         True

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase "DB1-2016" | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name     IndexEnabled
----     ------------
DB1-2016        False

If it shows IndexEnabled True, it means that indexing is enabled.
If it shows IndexEnabled False, it means that indexing is disabled.

Indexing is enabled on database DB6-2016. Let’s see how to disable indexing.

Disable search indexing on database

Run the following command to disable indexing on that particular database. After that, check the status.

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase "DB6-2016" -IndexEnabled $false

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase "DB6-2016" | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name     IndexEnabled
----     ------------
DB6-2016        False

You can also run the following command to check the indexing. This will list all the databases.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name      IndexEnabled
----      ------------
DB3-2016         False
DB1-2016         False
DB6-2016         False
DB9-2016         False
DB20-2016        False
DB4-2016         False
DB12-2016        False

Database DB6-2016 search indexing is disabled.

Disable search indexing on Exchange Server

Disable indexing on the Exchange Server. Run the following commands.

[PS] C:\>Stop-Service MSExchangeFastSearch

[PS] C:\>Set-Service MSExchangeFastSearch -StartupType Disabled

Check if indexing is disabled on all the databases.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name      IndexEnabled
----      ------------
DB3-2016         False
DB1-2016         False
DB6-2016         False
DB9-2016         False
DB20-2016        False
DB4-2016         False
DB12-2016        False

Enable search indexing on Exchange Server

Run Exchange Management Shell as administrator. Enable indexing on the Exchange Server. Run the following commands.

[PS] C:\>Set-Service MSExchangeFastSearch -StartupType Automatic

[PS] C:\>Start-Service MSExchangeFastSearch

Check if indexing is enabled on all the databases.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name      IndexEnabled
----      ------------
DB3-2016          True
DB1-2016          True
DB6-2016          True
DB9-2016          True
DB20-2016         True
DB4-2016          True
DB12-2016         True

Everything is looking great!

Read more: Monitor Exchange database index state crawling »

Conclusion

In this article, we talked about how to disable search indexing. We also talked when you should disable indexing. You can read more about disabling Exchange search indexing at the Microsoft website.

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