Starting an Incremental Update of a Content Source

An incremental update of a content source includes only changed content. Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 removes deleted content from the content index but does not recrawl unchanged content. For this reason, performing an incremental update is faster than performing a full update.

You can perform an incremental update if you know that content has changed but you do not want to perform a full update. A periodic incremental update creates the index without using the time or resources required for a full update. You can then perform a full update less often. In general, you should perform an incremental update unless there is a reason for performing a full update.

Note  You can optimize your resources by configuring SharePoint Portal Server to perform an incremental update daily and a full update weekly. This allows you to have daily updates of changed content and periodic full updates of all content.

An incremental update does not update content that you have excluded by using the rules settings for the content index. For example, you have configured a content source to create a content index of document types .doc, .htm, and .ppt. You perform a full update. You then modify the content source so that it creates an index that includes only .doc and .htm document types (you exclude content with a document type of .ppt). You must perform a full update to incorporate this change into the content index.

You can start an incremental update only if the update status is Idle. You can view the update status in the Update Status column for the content source on the Manage Content Sources page.

Start an incremental update of a content source

1. On the Site Settings page, in the Manage Search Settings and Indexed Content section, click Configure search and indexing.
2. On the Configure Search and Indexing page, in the Other Content Sources section, click Manage content sources.
3. On the Manage Content Sources page, rest the pointer on the name of the content source, and then click the arrow that appears.
4. On the menu that appears, click Incremental Update.

You can schedule automatic updates of a content source. For more information, see Specifying the Search Schedule for a Content Source.