Offline Files not indexed?

[Richard Perry]

I have a mapped drive to a server (H). I have taken the entire H drive
'offline'. All files are fine and available. However, when I open the H
drive and then search for files, no results are returned until I select
Advanced Search and then check to 'Include non-indexed, hidden, and system
files (might be slow)'.

When I do this, the search is performed fine.

In Indexing Options, I have verified that Offline Files is included.

Any ideas?

Richard Perry

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello Richard,

Thank you for posting in the Microsoft newsgroup!

From your post, my understanding on this issue is: the offline files are
not indexed. If I have misunderstood your problem, please feel free to let
me know.

Can you tell me how you configured index for the offline files?

Offline files are stored in a directory "csc" and this directory is hidden
by default. Based on your offline file configuration, it could resize in
the root directory or in %windir%. You can index this folder manually and
try to search it with index.

Best Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Richard Perry]

Step by step follows:
1. In My Computer, I right-click the mapped H drive and choose 'Always
Available Offline'
2. Let it sync

That's it, right? I mean, Offline Files is supposed to be simple, right?

Now, I use them, and I search them, and I notice that I don't get any
results until I select Advanced Search and then check to 'Include
non-indexed, hidden, and system files (might be slow)'.

As previously stated, I then verified that Offline Files was included in the
Indexing Options. I did this by performing the following steps:
1. Clicked Start, typed 'Indexing Options', and noted that 'Offline Files'
was included in the listed locations.

I don't know what additional information you are asking for. There really
isn't that much to give.

Richard

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello Richard,

Please try the following steps to enable index on offline network driver:
1. Start Indexing Options with the command "index Options"
2. Click offline files then click Modify->show all locations
3. Click continue on the popped up window and choose all the disk
partitions in the Indexed Locations window
4. Close Indexed locations window and click Advanced
5. In Advanced Options Window click Rebuild to rebuild all indexes in all
locations.

After the rebuild is finished, test if problem still persistes.

Thanks & Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Richard Perry]

I have followed your suggestions, and yes, the problem still persists.

Richard

 

[Guest]

Hi

I am also having this problem with searching offline files that are indexed.
If I try and do a search within the offline folders, it doesn't find
anything (but I know there are files there that meet the search criteria).
The only way pick up on the files is to change to search to 'Indexed
Locations'. This is a pain, particularly when I only want to search within a
subset of my offline folders (eg: within one folder) to narrow the search.

Looking forward to a solution.

Cheers
David

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello Richard,

Do you have encrypted files/folders in the offline files? Encrypted files
are not indexed by default. You can enable indexing on encrypted files by
select the "Index Encrypted Files" option in Advanced Index Option.

David, I think you can check this options as well.

Have a great day!

Best Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Guest]

Hi Sean

My offline files are not encrypted.

Regards
David

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello,

For your question, we will make some research and reply to you ASAP. Thanks
for your patience.

Best Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello,

I tested your problem, but I couldn't reproduce it. In my environment, the
offline files are indexed by default and can be searched without locate to
the offline files folder. Regarding my test, after set a share available
offline, the content of the share is stored in the %windir%\CSC folder and
it's indexed by default.

Please refer to the following steps to reset offline folders:
1. Take owner ship of the %windir%\CSC
2. Set permission for the logon account
3. Remove/move all the content in the csc folder
4. Check/set the properties of the folder: General->Adanvced->"For fast
searching, allow Indexing Service to index this folder"
5. Make share offline again and test the problem

I hope the steps could help you resolve your issue.

Best Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Richard Perry]

I tested this extensively in the past, but I don't remember now the exact
procedures or results. However, I do remember that I seemed to find that it
was working properly, but then after several days passed, I was no longer
finding results from the index.

Unfortunately, this has never been a high priority for me personally, so I
have not documented my experience with any detail. However, as I consider
deploying Vista to our 50+ notebook users, it is my intention to use Offline
Files and folder redirection to ensure that their files are well protected.

If indexing offline files is quirky, then that is going to significantly
impact my training, deployment, and support.

Richard

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello Richard,

I didn't expect a long term test last time, so I've removed the original
test environment. However, the new test environment has been established
and I think I reproduced your problem.

Please try the following steps to fix your problem:
1. Start Indexing Options
2. Click Modify
3. Navigate to the %windir%\CSC folder and choose it
4. Click Ok
Depends on the offline files' quantity, it may take a few minutes to index
every offline files. After indexing is done, you should be able to search
offline files with index.

Based on my experience in Windows XP, offline files won't be modified
automatically, but I'll keep an eye on my test environment in the next a
few days. If anything changes, I'll check it out and discuss with you.

Thanks & Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Richard Perry]

I have performed the steps recommended. If this does indeed resolve the
problem, and if the CSC directory is in fact the stored location of Offline
Files, then is this a bug, or is this by design?

As I have not been involved in any kind of reporting of bugs found in
Microsoft products in the past, is there a specific procedure involved to do
so?

Richard

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello Richard,

I did some further tests in my test environment. It turns out that if I
change the index settings a few times in a short time period, the system
will take a long time to finish all the index, un-index, re-index job.
Based on my test, I changed indexing options (add/remove index on CSC
folder, add/remove index on user offline folder) a few times in an hour, I
couldn't get a correct search result in the next 5 hours. But, after I
rebuild index (with offline files selected and CSC folder de-selected),
everything is working fine.

If you need to set lots of offline files for your clients, I think it's a
good idea to rebuild the index periodically. However, since Vista is still
new to us, I didn't find a way to rebuild index automatically by a command
line tool or by scripts.

I hope my reply could help you.

Thanks & Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

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[Richard Perry]

Let me see if I am understanding your suggestion correctly.

1. Open Indexing Options
2. Restore Default settings (my own suggestion to get back to baseline),
restart
3. Ensure that 'Offline Files' is selected (which is the case by default)

If this is your suggestion, then I am standing by my original statements
which is that this does not work correctly.

Let's say that I take a single file offline. I then configure Indexing
Options as described above. I then navigate to my H drive (Mapped to
\\server\share\directory), and perform a search for 'file.ext', it will scan
the location and display the file.

I then right-click my H drive, and choose to make available offline, and let
the indexing complete. I then navigate to the H drive, search for 'file.ext'
and no results are found. However, when I choose 'Advanced Search', 'Include
non-indexed, hidden, and system files...', then the results are returned.

David's previous post confirms that at least 2 individuals are experiencing
the same issue. I also can reproduce the scenario. I have been able to
reproduce this in Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate.

I am looking forward to confirmation of a bug and/or a fix. As previously
stated, this is not a severe problem, but it is highly annoying as one
develops processes for finding files, and then has to operate differently
for a specific set of files.

Richard

 

[Sean Cai [MSFT]]

Hello Richard,

Thank you for your reply.

I do find a bug report talking about the same behavior in Vista that you
have mentioned, but there's no conclusion and solution yet. However, based
on my test, you can avoid this problem by rebuild the offline files' index.
Though this workaround is inconvenient but at least we can control the
search behavior and avoid the annoying problem.

Have a great day!

Thanks & Regards,

Sean Cai, MCSE2000
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
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