Sharepoint-Search does not search the whole documents.

Question

Hello,

We have some Excel-Files that have around 5 sheets of 900 rows each with 10 columns.

When searching on Sharepoint for the files using their content (so using various entries), the files are only found when using data from roughly the first 1700 lines.

When converting the sheets to .csv first and then importing them as data, the search does work for all data.

Is there a limit to how deep Sharepoint searches into a document? Or is this some kind of indexing error?

Answer 1

Hi @Chris Degrand ,

Good day! Welcome to Q&A forum.

This is a known limitation in SharePoint search where Excel files may not be fully indexed beyond a certain point. Here's how to address it:

Root Causes:

1. Default Row Limit: SharePoint has a default limit on how many rows it indexes from Excel files
2. File Size Limitations: Very large Excel files may not be fully processed

Solutions

1. Adjust Excel Indexing Settings

# PowerShell to increase the row limit (default is 512)

$searchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

$searchApp.SetProperty("ExcelNumberOfRowsToIndex", 5000) # Set your desired value

$searchApp.Update()

2. Modify File Size Limits

# Increase the maximum file size for indexing (default is ~16MB)

$searchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

$searchApp.MaxDownloadSize = 52428800 # 50MB in bytes

$searchApp.Update()

3. Full Crawl Required

After making these changes, you must perform a full crawl:

1. Go to Central Administration > Search Service Application
2. Navigate to "Content Sources"
3. Start a full crawl

Hope these information helps.

Please do let us know if you have any further queries.

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