PlexPass holder here. Today I tried to do a search of something that I know should yield at least a dozen or two results from my media libraries, and I get exactly one result. Tried pinning previously unpinned libraries and re-doing the search, same result. What gives?
Also, why can’t I search ONLY in my media libraries and not online etc.
Server Version#: 1.30.0.6486
Player Version#: 4.87.2 <-this is PlexWeb-- it that what’s meant by Player?
Hosted Web app <–click
Make sure you have what you want enabled here
https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/online-media-sources
In the search bar you can also select where you want to view search items from here
Thanks. I adjusted all the online things to “disabled.” Quitting and restarting the server after that seemed to help somewhat to not show me online stuff.
In the parameters/settings thing you mentioned there, it shows my current local server. However, for instance I’ll enter “Alexia” and it’ll return all instances of Alexis, Alex, Alice (for some reason) but none with Alexia (and I know they exist). It’s weird.
Unless there’s some kind of bug, the only other thing I can think of is to check in your library settings
3 dots next to the library → Manage Library → Edit → Advanced
Do you possibly have that library set to exclude from home screen and global search?
I’ve got it set to the second option: excluded from main screen but not from global search. Either it’s a bug or maybe the search only looks for the first five characters or something?
When I try to change that visibility setting and hit save changes btw, I get a message saying my changes cannot be saved.
Does this appear to be impacting just one library?
Searches for other items in different libraries show up ok?
Since you can’t change the settings, I’m starting to think maybe you have some corruption in your database
Settings → Troubleshooting → Download Logs
Attach zip file here on your next post
I actually had somehow changed the agent to something other than “personal media” and once I changed it back that let me change the option you mentioned.
I’d rather not upload my database here for the moment. Can I just reinstall the software and/or reset the database somehow etc. ? It may just be time to do that, as I don’t think I’ve ever done it.
Are these instructions linked below still valid? The easiest thing to do seems to be to quit out of the Plex Media Server, find the database file and remove/delete it, restart it and set up the libraries again. Does that work? I realize it’ll take a while.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/repair-a-corrupted-database/
BTW it bears mentioning that my Windows 10 (64 bit) username has an accented character in it which caused an issue in the past with thumbnail creation for video files (which was a bug fixed after I reported it).
Yes, that article is still valid.
On Windows it’s also pretty easy to restore from a backup database that Plex creates during scheduled maintenance
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202485658-restore-a-database-backed-up-via-scheduled-tasks/
You never really know if the corruption happened before the backup file was made until you try it unfortunately
If you try to repair the database and don’t see a change, I would take a few of the movies that don’t show up in the search and put them in a new test library
See if the search works for those items. You might be able to get away with just recreating that library while keeping everything else
If it’s easier for you, I guess you can just delete everything and start over. That’s the last option for me but some servers are much more complex to recreate
Thanks. BTW, when it’s working perfectly, is search limited on the number of characters into the file name string it does the searching? Also, does it return some maximum number of matches and no more? There’s no way to search within a particular library is there?
These are probably all FAQs and I’ll see if I can find a list that answers them. It probably also depends on whether one is searching on desktop/laptop vs. Android/iOS versions of the app.
The only thing I use the search on is Plex for Windows or Plex web using chrome
You can search a few letters that should return a lot of results, but as you get closer spelling the whole title the list will get smaller and smaller till you finish spelling the title.
The exact spelling of a title you only have one of should only return one result
The list of returns can be pretty long. If you click “show more” at the bottom it can give you several pages. There might be a limit but I couldn’t say what it might be.
The search is server wide. You can’t specify what library to return results from only if you want to exclude certain libraries as we discussed above
OK, I think I’ve figured out that part of the problem I’m having must be that at some point I moved the database that PMS is actually using to a place other than the default place under C:\Users$USER\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Databases .
It was when that other bug with the thumbnails failing (because of the accent in my Winddows user ID) happened. That bug has since been fixed.
I know this because I set up a separate hierarchy under C:\plexdata\Plex Media Server\Plug-in Support\Databases and the database there is actually updated per its last modified date. The other is static since 2018 sometime. Within the PMS settings as viewed in Firefox I can’t find where to confirm the location of the current database PMS is using.
Anyway tl;dr should I just follow the rebuild a new database from scratch and recreate libraries instructions? Probably easiest.
FYI I tried the steps to repair the database using the instructions at the link you mentioned but when I entered the copy command in the command line interface it didn’t seem to create the backup “.original” file when I went to check in Windows, so I figured I should leave it alone.
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