Search has encountered a problem that prevents results from being returned. If the issue persists, please contact your administrator
If you are working in SharePoint Online
Solution: Just Ctrl+F5
If still you are facing the issue, check the result source.
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If you are working with Onprem SharePoint
Solution: Just Ctrl+F5
If still you are facing the issue, check the result source.
Recreate the search service application from Central Administration.
if above option not works, create search service application through powershell.
Create a new Service Application:
$ServiceApplication = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
-Name "Search Service Application"
-ApplicationPool $spAppPoolName
-DatabaseServer "YOURSERVERNAME"
-DatabaseName "Database Name"
Create a new Service Application Proxy:
New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy
-Name "Search Service Application Proxy" -SearchApplication "Search Service Application"
Get the Search Instance. The instance is used to associate new Search Components (crawl, query, admin…) create later with the instance itself:
$searchInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local
Get the active Search Topology. This is used to monitor the state of the old search topology which becomes inactive if the new one gets active:
$InitialSearchTopology = $ServiceApplication | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Active
Create a new Search Topology. New Search Components (crawl, query, admin…) have to be associated with a search instance and a search topology.
$SearchTopology = $ServiceApplication | New-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology
Create Administration Component and Processing Components. Here you need the search instance and new search topology from above:
New-SPEnterpriseSearchAdminComponent
-SearchTopology $SearchTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchAnalyticsProcessingComponent
-SearchTopology $SearchTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchContentProcessingComponent
-SearchTopology $SearchTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchInstance
New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryProcessingComponent
-SearchTopology $SearchTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchInstance
Create a new Crawl Component:
New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent
-SearchTopology $SearchTopology -SearchServiceInstance $searchInstance
Create a new Index (Query) Component:
New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology $SearchTopology
-SearchServiceInstance $searchInstance -RootDirectory $IndexLocation
Note:
In SharePoint 2010 the PowerShell cmdlet was New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryComponent.
The ‘RootDirectory’ property requires and existing AND empty folder like "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Data\Office Server\Applications\Index". If not existing OR not empty it fails.
Activated the new Search Topology and deactivate the old one:
$SearchTopology | Set-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology
Note:
I encountered that activating the topology requires all components created first, otherwise you get an error e.g. 'Set-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology : At least one index partition does not contain any components.'
In SharePoint 2010 the cmdlet was Set-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryTopology.
The old topology wasn't set to inactive for 15 minutes although TechNet says: "This cmdlet enables the search topology with the given identity, marking the currently active search topology as inactive." So maybe I didn't allocated enough system resources (especially I was short of RAM) or it takes more time.
Remove the old Search Topology:
do { Write-Host -NoNewline .;Start-Sleep 6;}
while ($InitialSearchTopology.State -ne "Inactive")
$InitialSearchTopology | Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Confirm:$false
