SharePoint Server 2007 Search Setup

How’s that title for alliteration?

SharePoint Server 2007 does NOT automatically enable search for you. It’s as simple as that, so we need to do it.

1. You need to go into Central Administrator first. This is where you maintain pretty much everything within your server farm.
2. Click on Operations.
3. Under Topology and Services, click on Services on Server.
4. Make sure the Office SharePoint Server Search Service is enabled. If it is disabled, click Start.
5. Enter your Shared Services Administration
6. Under Search, click on Search settings
7. If there are items in the index, and your search still doesn’t work, there may be other issues, like the Indexing Service for your server may not be started.
8. Click on Content sources and crawl schedules
9. There should be a Content Source already created: click on the name of that Content Source.
10. Under Crawl Schedules, setup schedules for Full and Incremental Crawl
11. Under Start Full Crawl, check Start full crawl of this content source
12. Click OK

Now your content should be crawled. You will also be amazed to find that .pdf is not a default crawl type.

1. Go back under Crawl Settings
2. Click on File types and add the pdf extension

Phew, now we should have a semi functional search service. Keep in mind that there are many other settings that can be set. Nose around and setup the other sections of the search service.