How do I reindex a site or a library in SharePoint

Sometimes content in SharePoint needs to be reindexed in order for SharePoint’s search engine to show correct results. When you reindex a site/library, all items in the site/library will be flagged for recrawl, and during the next incremental or continuous crawl, the items will be recrawled.

A prerequisite to reindex a site/library is that you have the “Manage site” permission, a permission that the site collection administrator of a site has.

Reindex a SharePoint site

1. Open the workspace.
2. Open the workspace in SharePoint.
3. Click on the “SharePoint Settings” icon and select the ”Site information” option:
   
4. On the next page, click on “View all site settings”:
   
5. Under the “Search” section, click on the “Search and offline availability” link:
   
6. On the “Search and Offline Availability” page, click on the “Reindex site” button:
   
7. You will now have to confirm that you want to reindex the site by clicking on the “Reindex site” button:
   
8. You can now close the page. The site is flagged for reindexing and the site’s content will start to appear in search results when the next search crawl starts, normally within 15 minutes.

Reindex a SharePoint library

1. Open the workspace’s SharePoint site.
2. Open the document library’s settings by clicking on “Site contents” on the left navigation, then clicking on the ellipsis (three vertical dots) and selecting the “Settings” option:
   
3. Under the “General Settings” section, click on the “Advanced settings” link:
   
4. Half way down the page, click on the “Reindex Document Library” button:
   
5. You will now have to confirm that you want to reindex the library by clicking on the “Reindex Document Library” button:
   
6. You can now close the page. The library is flagged for reindexing and the library’s content will start to appear in search results when the next search crawl starts, normally within 15 minutes.