Reset Search Index in SharePoint 2013 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 search index in SharePoint 2013.

• Go to SharePoint 2013 Central Administration >> Service Applications 
• Pick your Search Service Application 
• In Search Administration page, Click on "Index Reset" link under crawling section of the left navigation menu.
  
• In the index reset page, click on "Reset Now" button to reset search index in SharePoint 2013.

Before resetting search index, make sure no search crawls are in progress - Stop all search crawls, disable continuous crawl - otherwise, index reset may get stuck! After index reset, You must run full crawl to enable search results!

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 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.

If you still get Timeout errors, Clear SharePoint configuration cache and then try again!

Related post: How to Stop SharePoint Search Crawls