Rebuild search indexes

Current version: 8.1

There are situations where you need to rebuild indexes, for example, when you deploy to a production environment, when indexes are out of date, or when indexes have been corrupted.

There are three different ways to rebuild indexes. This topic describes how to:

  • Use the Sitecore Control Panel

  • Use custom code

  • Use the Content Editor

Use the Sitecore Control Panel

To rebuild indexes from the Sitecore Control Panel:

  1. Log in to the Launchpad.

  2. Open the Control Panel.

  3. In the Indexing section, click Indexing Manager.

  4. In the Indexing Manager dialog box, select the indexes you want to rebuild, and click Rebuild:

Use custom code

You can rebuild indexes from custom code by running a script similar to one of these from a custom .aspx page:

RequestResponse
// To rebuild "new" search indexes, use this piece of code for every "new" index
IndexCustodian.FullRebuild(ContentSearchManager.GetIndex("[INDEX NAME]"), true);
// Or to rebuild all indexes, use the following piece of code:
IndexCustodian.RebuildAll();

Use the Content Editor

To rebuild indexes from the Content Editor:

  1. In the Content Editor, click the Developer tab.

    Note

    If you do not see the Developer tab, right-click in the menu bar and select Developer in the list of tabs.

  2. In the Indexing tools group, select one of the options to rebuild indexes:

    • Rebuild index – opens a list of all indexes. This list contains information about when each index was last rebuilt. Select an index to rebuild it.

    • Rebuild all – rebuilds all indexes.

    • Re-Index Tree – process the selected item and all descendants recursively, and force an update operation on all indexes that are related to the selected content area.

      Note

      Use this command only in situations where incremental indexing is either not working as expected, or when you use the manual update strategy. You should only do this when absolutely necessary.

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