Disable search indexing in Exchange Server

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. In this article, you will learn how to disable search indexing in Exchange Server.

Note: 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.

Get Exchange search indexing on database

First, let’s get the index status on each database. Run Exchange Management Shell as administrator.

The database DB06-2016 shows as IndexEnabled True. It means that indexing is enabled on that database. If it shows False, it means that indexing is disabled.

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

Name      IndexEnabled
----      ------------
DB03-2016        False
DB01-2016        False
DB06-2016         True
DB09-2016        False
DB20-2016        False
DB04-2016        False
DB12-2016        False

If you want to know the indexing status of a particular database, run the following command.

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase "DB06-2016" | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name     IndexEnabled
----     ------------
DB06-2016        True

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

Name     IndexEnabled
----     ------------
DB01-2016       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 DB06-2016. Let’s see how to disable indexing.

Disable Exchange search indexing on database

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

[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase "DB06-2016" -IndexEnabled $false

[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase "DB06-2016" | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize

Name     IndexEnabled
----     ------------
DB06-2016       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
----      ------------
DB03-2016        False
DB01-2016        False
DB06-2016        False
DB09-2016        False
DB20-2016        False
DB04-2016        False
DB12-2016        False

Database DB06-2016 search indexing is disabled.

Disable Exchange search indexing

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
----      ------------
DB03-2016        False
DB01-2016        False
DB06-2016        False
DB09-2016        False
DB20-2016        False
DB04-2016        False
DB12-2016        False

Enable Exchange search indexing

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
----      ------------
DB03-2016         True
DB01-2016         True
DB06-2016         True
DB09-2016         True
DB20-2016         True
DB04-2016         True
DB12-2016         True

Everything looks great!

Read more: Monitor Exchange database index state crawling »

Conclusion

You learned how to disable search indexing in Exchange Server. Only disable search indexing when you are migrating many mailboxes to that Exchange Server. Otherwise, keep indexing enabled because it’s an excellent feature for the users.

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