Reset Search Index in SharePoint 2013 / 2016 using PowerShell

Problem: SharePoint 2013 search crawling process got stuck, and we got to reset the corrupted search index.

Solution: Follow these steps to reset the search index in SharePoint Server.

• Go to SharePoint Central Administration >> Service Applications 
• Pick your Search Service Application 
• On the Search Administration page, click on the “Index Reset” link under the crawling section of the left navigation menu.

  

• In the index reset page, click on “Reset Now” button to reset search index in SharePoint 2013.

PowerShell script to reset index in SharePoint 2013:

At times, you may have to do it with PowerShell for reasons, such as:

• When you try to reset search index from Web UI, you get timeouts error on large index
• You may want to partially reset index for only certain content source

Reset search index in SharePoint 2013 with PowerShell:

Here is the PowerShell to reset the search index partially (Reset search index for a specific content source):

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

#Get Search service application
$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication

#Content Source Name
$ContentSourceName = "Crescent Portal"

#Get the content source 
$ContentSource = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -Identity $ContentSourceName -SearchApplication $SSA 

#Get Each Start Address
$StartAddresses = $ContentSource.StartAddresses | ForEach-Object { $_.OriginalString } 

#Clear Indexed content starts with custom contnet source
$ContentSource.StartAddresses.Clear()

#Re-add the start address to content source
ForEach ($Address in $StartAddresses ){ $ContentSource.StartAddresses.Add($Address) }

Reset SharePoint 2013 Search Index:
To Reset SharePoint 2013 search index completely using PowerShell, use this cmdlet:

(Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication).reset($true, $true)

Where the $True parameter denotes: Disable Alerts & Ignore Timeout error.