Exchange 2019 Search Issues

Matt Pollock 246 Reputation points
2020-08-14T07:45:13.357+00:00

Hi,

I'm in the process of migrating my orgs email infrastructure from Exchange 2013 to Exchange 2019
All new Exchange servers are running 2019 CU6, the Outlook client is the latest Office 365 click to run version, latest updates applied.

I'm 600 mailboxes into the migration, and I'm starting to get users complaining about being unable to search Outlook.
All of the Outlook clients are in cached mode by default.

During my investigation I'm seeing that whilst in cached mode performing a search eventually times out with the "Something went wrong and your search couldn't be completed", "It looks like there is a problem with your network connection"
Clicking the "Let's look your computer instead" link will return results contained in the local .ost file, but only going back as far as 3 or 4 months ago.
Cached mode is set to have all mail downloaded it is worth noting.

Putting Outlook in Online mode instead of cached mode does not improve things, exactly the same results are experienced when searching.

After reading a few threads I have restarted the following services on all new mailbox servers "Microsoft Exchange Search", MIcrosoft Exchange Search Host Controller" with the hop that the database search indexes will be refreshed/rebuilt. I did this yesterday and left the servers overnight, but there is no improvement in searching in my testing.

Has anyone had simliar experiences with their setup, and more importantly being able to fix these issues?
Considering Exchange 2019 is now on CU6 I find that this issue still being apparent is really poor.

Thanks

Matt

Outlook Management
Outlook Management
Outlook: A family of Microsoft email and calendar products.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
4,896 questions
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server Management
Exchange Server: A family of Microsoft client/server messaging and collaboration software.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
7,353 questions

13 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Dani Zontag 1 Reputation point
    2020-12-15T21:40:39.307+00:00

    Exchange 2019 CU8 got released today, give it a try, KB458885.
    this included fix might do the trick?: - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4583542

  2. JackieB 1 Reputation point
    2020-12-17T19:51:48.583+00:00

    We've been dealing with Microsoft Support for months on Exchange 2019 search issues and they are completely useless. I don't understand A. why they can't easily reproduce this in a lab and B. whey they cant just look up other tickets of users reporting the same issue. Now that they have released CU8 of course we're told to upgrade to that even though there is nothing documented in the release notes that relates to this issue. Are companies just not using Exchange 2019? Or does everyone have their users in cached mode? (impractical for VDI environment)

  3. Matt Pollock 246 Reputation points
    2020-12-17T20:30:41.567+00:00

    I fixed this issue by removing EWS API 2.2 and installing on a different server.
    EWS API 2.2 had worked for 6 years on Exchange 2013 servers, but turned out to be very problematic when installed on Exchange 2019 servers.
    I read somewhere that the EWS API conflicts with Exchange Web Services in IIS.

    0 comments
  4. Marco Mandricardo 11 Reputation points
    2020-12-23T23:34:42.433+00:00

    hi, i have same problem\scenario:

    The problem is native from the beginning and is still present.

    We are in trouble with the search from outlook 2016 in online mode.
    We can find some results with a specific search query: (R: I: 2020 360-R: 20117- 1548GSC -A********S - Demande de pièce de rechange)
    but searching for '2020-360' match all elements except for 2 specific items.

    Refining our search query, including other texts that is part of the object of the mail, can find also the target mails.
    with the query : 'Demande' we find all the items requested.

    We have verified the update level of the clients 2016,
    Office Professional Plus 2016 16.0.5095.1000 MSO 16.0.5095.1000 a 32bit

    we have a new fresh deployed Server Windows 2019 with exchange server 2019 CU 7 onboard.

    We tried all possibilities offered in this article: https://support.microsoft.com/it-it/office/risoluzione-dei-problemi-di-ricerca-in-outlook-2556b11f-f4d8-46be-b0a7-de33a3f4f066#bkmk_incompleteresults
    In OWA we can find all items without problems, than we assume that Server side was fine.
    but We notice also that on Exchange console, with the command: Get-MailboxStatistics m**********@a********.it | fl funn,MCDB
    we obtain some strange behavoirs:
    BigFunnelIsEnabled : True
    BigFunnelMaintainRefiners : True
    BigFunnelMessageCount : 16668
    BigFunnelIndexedCount : 16002
    BigFunnelPartiallyIndexedCount : 666
    BigFunnelNotIndexedCount : 0
    BigFunnelCorruptedCount : 0
    BigFunnelStaleCount : 0
    BigFunnelShouldNotBeIndexedCount : 1030

    0 comments
  5. Panos 1 Reputation point
    2021-03-23T08:11:48.28+00:00

    I have a similar problem issue with email search in outlook 2016 and 2019 connected in exchange server 2019.
    We have limited results when we search for emails and after the latest security updates for exchange 2019 we faced a new issue, we cannot find the latest emails (search starts 1 week back).
    I partly solved this by changing search area from current folder or mailbox to All Outlook items .
    You are searching on the server and not in the local file (.ost file) when the outlook is connected to exchange server. Try to search with wifi disable or Ethernet cable unplugged in a cashed mode mailbox and you will find what you search.