Rebuilding the Search Index
You may occasionally find yourself wanting to rebuild the search index (e.g., if it's very large and you remove a big chunk of indexes, or if it gets corrupt). To rebuild the search index, follow these steps:
- In the Search box, type "index" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Windows displays the Indexing Options dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1. The Indexing Options dialog box.
- Click the Advanced button. Windows displays the Advanced Options dialog box.
- Make sure the Index Settings tab is displayed. (See Figure 2.)
Figure 2. The Index Settings tab of the Advanced Options dialog box.
- Click the Rebuild button. Windows asks you if you are sure you want to perform the action.
- Click OK to start the rebuild.
- Close any open dialog boxes.
The work involved in rebuilding a search index is done behind the scenes and could take a while to complete. While Windows is rebuilding, you can work with other programs just fine, but you won't be able to do a search and get any meaningful results.
Author Bio
Barry Dysert
Barry has been a computer professional for over 35 years, working in different positions such as technical team leader, project manager, and software developer. He is currently a software engineer with an emphasis on developing custom applications under Microsoft Windows. When not working with Windows or writing Tips, Barry is an amateur writer. His first non-fiction book is titled "A Chronological Commentary of Revelation." Learn more about Barry...
Moving and Resizing Windows
The ability to work on multiple things simultaneously is a hallmark of Windows. If you have many windows up at once, ...
Discover More
Sharing Resources on a Network
Business or home networks can make efficient use of resources by sharing them. You can establish a print server and/or a ...
Discover More
Using the DiskPart Utility
The DiskPart utility is a low-level command-line program that lets you manage disks, virtual disks, partitions, and ...
Discover More
Creating a System Repair Disk on a USB Flash Drive
Having a system repair disk is almost as important as doing regular backups. CDs and DVDs, though, tend to get scratched ...
Discover More
Turning On the Display of File Extensions
Windows is configured, by default, to hide file extensions. This could be confusing or outright dangerous. For example, ...
Discover More
Copying Data with Robocopy
Robocopy is a robust file copy utility built into Windows. If you have a lot of file management to do that can't easily ...
Discover More
This tip (12936) applies to Windows 7, 8, and 10.
Comments