Troubleshooting "No Results Found"

Scenario

You have installed and configured Exclaimer Mail Archiver in your environment. A user is searching for an email, however, the specific email is not returned in the search results.

Reason

There can be several explanations for this issue.

Each point below explains one scenario and what you, as an Archive Administrator, can do to resolve the issue:

• The user doesn't have permissions to view the email.
  
  
• The email was outside the Store Retention period.
  
  
• The email wasn't journaled.
  
  
• The email is waiting to be indexed:
  
  - Requires force update.
  
  - Change the Batch Indexing Frequency.
  
  
• No policies applied to the email.
  
  
• The index needs to be resynchronized.

Resolution

The user doesn't have permissions to view the email

With Exclaimer Mail Archiver, emails are archived using a policy to a specific store. Permissions are set for each store separately. Therefore, it's possible that the email is being archived to a store that the user doesn't have access to.

Follow these steps to check the permissions for each store:

1. Open the Mail Archiver console.
   
   
2. From the tree on the left, expand Exclaimer, Mail Archiver, Storage.
   
   
3. Select each store in turn, and examine the permissions on the Security tab (check if the permissions are correct).

Alternatively, you can log in as an Archive Administrator. By default, this user has permission to view all emails in the store. As an Archive Administrator, you can search and confirm that the email is in the store. By examining the Message Properties tab you can identify which store the email is in.

The email was outside the Store Retention period

Each store has a Retention Period (this is how long emails are held in the store for). Once an email is older than this period, it is permanently removed from the store. By default, the retention period is 25 years - so there could be a possibility that this may have been changed.

Follow these steps to identify how long the Retention Period is:

1. Open the Mail Archiver console.
   
   
2. From the left-hand side, expand Exclaimer, Mail Archiver, Storage then click on the specific store.
   
   
3. In the central pane, select the Availability tab.
   
   
4. The Retention period is displayed.
   
   

The email wasn't journaled

When Exclaimer Mail Archiver is installed, the default configuration is for all emails sent and received in your Exchange Organization to be journaled. However, if this configuration has been changed (or if journaling is not working correctly) then the email may not have been journaled and therefore not archived.

For an email that's been sent recently, follow these steps to confirm whether the email was journaled:

1. Click Start.
   
   
2. Select All Programs, Administrative Tools, then click Event Viewer.
   
   
3. The Event Viewer is displayed.
   
   
4. From the left-hand side, expand Event Viewer (Local), Applications and Services Logs then click Exclaimer.
   
   
5. The central pane will show details of each email processed, the policies and the store it was stored to.
   
   Use the email date and time to locate events during this time. If there is no entry then the email has not been journaled.

For an email that was not sent recently, log in to the journal mailbox via OWA or Outlook to check whether there are a large number of emails waiting to be processed. If you find that there are a number of emails, contact Exclaimer Support for further assistance.

The email is waiting to be indexed

Exclaimer Mail Archiver stores email almost immediately to the Store. However, when users search for emails this uses the Index. By default, the Index is updated with new emails every 30 minutes. Therefore, your users may have to wait up to 30 minutes for the emails they have sent to be visible in their search results.

You can:

• For a one-off case, force an immediate update to the Index. Any emails waiting to be added to the Index will be added straight away and appear in search results.
  
  
• Change the Batch Indexing Frequency so that emails are added to the Index more frequently, making them available to users faster.

Force an update

To force an immediate update to the index:

1. Open the Mail Archiver console.
   
   
2. From the tree on the left, expand Exclaimer, Mail Archiver, Index Maintenance and click the Index in the central pane. 
   
   
   Note: The Index name is the same as the Store name.
3. Click Force Update. 

Change Batch Indexing Frequency

To change the Batch Indexing Frequency

1. Open the Mail Archiver console.
   
   
2. From the left-hand side, expand Exclaimer, Mail Archiver, Storage then click on the specific store.
   
   
3. From the central pane, select the Data tab.
   
   
4. Under Search Index, change the frequency as required.
   
   
5. Click Save.
   
   
   Caution: The new Batch Indexing Frequency will take effect immediately.

No policies applied to the emails

In Exclaimer Mail Archiver, emails are stored to a Store according to one or more Policies.

A Policy is a set of rules that an email must pass in order to be stored to a particular Store.
If an email is processed that doesn't satisfy any Policies then the email will not be archived.

To view which Policies apply to a specific email:

1. Click Start.
   
   
2. Select All Programs, Administrative Tools, then click Event Viewer.
   
   The Event Viewer is displayed.
   
   
3. From the left-hand side, expand Event Viewer (Local), Applications and Services Logs then click Exclaimer.
   
   
4. The central pane will show details of each email processed, the policies it satisfied and the store it was stored to.
   Use the email date and time to locate events during this time. You will also find an event for the required email.

Index needs to be resynchronized

When a user performs a search, this searches the Index. The Index works much like a book; allowing the software to look for a particular word or phrase and rapidly locate the correct email in the Store.

In busy email environments, there is a possibility that an email is added to the Store and it isn't added to the Index. To resolve this, you can resynchronize the index - this will ensure that each email in a specific Store has an entry in the Index.

To resynchronize the Index

1. Open the Mail Archive console.
   
   
2. From the left-hand side, expand Exclaimer, Mail Archiver then click Index Maintenance.
   
   
3. From the central pane, right-click the Index. 
   
   
   Note: The Index name is the same as the Store name.
4. From the right-click menu, select Add Task. 
   
   The Maintenance Tasks window is displayed. 
   
   
5. Select the Resynchronize with store option then click OK.

The Index Maintenance screen will start tracking the progress of the task.

Problem whilst archiving the emails

Sometimes when an email is read from the Journal mailbox, a problem may occur whilst it is being put into the Store. For example, the Microsoft Exchange server may have been restarting to install Windows updates or the disk you are using to store emails may have become full. In such scenarios, the Journal email will fail to import and, the Exclaimer Mail Archiver will automatically move the email to the Unable to Archive subfolder of the Journal mailbox.

At the same time, an event will be recorded in the Exclaimer Application Event Log.

To examine the Exclaimer Application Event Log: 

1. Click Start.
   
   
2. Select All Programs, Administrative Tools then click Event Viewer.
   
   The Event Viewer is displayed.
   
   
3. From the left-hand side, expand Event Viewer (Local), Applications and Services Logs and click Exclaimer.
   
   The central pane will show details of each email processed, the policies it satisfied and the store where it was stored to.
   
   
4. Use the email date and time to locate events during this time. You will also find an event for the required email which will explain why the error was displayed.
   
   Once you are confident that the issue has been resolved (for example, Microsoft Exchange is running normally or more disk space is available) then you can open the Journal Mailbox using Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Web App and move the email from the Unable to Archive subfolder of the Journal mailbox back to the Inbox.
   
   Emails in the Inbox will be processed immediately by Exclaimer Mail Archiver.