Search indexes only 16 megabytes of a document in SharePoint Portal Server 2001

You cannot locate text at the end of the document when you perform searches against the index, even though the gatherer reports that it successfully indexed a large document. If you enable successful logging for the workspace, the following error message is logged for the document's URL in the detailed update log that is accessible from the Content Sources folder:

This problem may occur when, for performance reasons, the gatherer only indexes text in a single document up to a certain size limit. Any text that remains is not indexed and the error message in the "Symptoms" section is logged.

Two registry values control this limit:

• MaxDownloadSize: This value specifies the maximum size of the document text that is filtered.
• MaxGrowFactor: This value specifies how large (as a factor of MaxDownloadSize) the output of the Index Filter on the document can be.

By default, MaxDownloadSize is 16 megabytes (MB), and MaxGrowFactor is 4 MB. By using these settings, the following document limits are effective:

• The maximum size when you index documents on file shares or in the workspace is 64 MB.
• The maximum size when you index documents on Web sites is 16 MB.

Warning If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.
To work around this problem, adjust MaxDownloadSize in the registry in Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server to enable indexing of larger documents. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Start Registry Editor.
2. Locate the MaxDownloadSize value under the following key in the registry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Gathering Manager
3. On the Edit menu, click DWORD, click Decimal, type the number of MB, and then click OK.
4. Quit Registry Editor.

If you continue to receive the error message that documents are partially indexed after you adjust the number of MB in MaxDownloadSize to a sufficiently large value, you may also need to adjust MaxGrowFactor to a higher value. For example, to increase this value to a factor of 8:

1. Start Registry Editor.
2. Locate the MaxGrowFactor value under the following key in the registry:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Gathering Manager
3. On the Edit menu, click DWORD, click Decimal, type 8, and then click OK.
4. Quit Registry Editor.

Note This article can also apply to Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. The only difference is the location of the registry entry. The following is the registry entry for SharePoint Portal Server 2003: