'Too many words retrieved in index' message

Last Reviewed: November 28, 2005

Article: DTS0119

Applies to: dtSearch (all versions)

Symptoms

Executing a search causes dtSearch to display a "Too many words retrieved in index" message.

Cause

dtSearch limits the number of unique words (not hits) that can be retrieved in a search. A search for * or *a* that retrieves thousands of words would exceed this limit.

Additional Information

The limit on the number of unique words that can be retrieved in a single search is determined by the maxWordsToRetrieve option setting in dtSearch.  In dtSearch 6 and 7, the default limit is 64,000 words, and the maximum allowed value for this limit is 256,000.

How to change the maxWordsToRetrieve option setting:

dtSearch Desktop 6 A registry entry can be used to change this in dtSearch. The key is:

     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\dtSearch Corp.\dtSearch\Settings\maxWordsToRetrieve

dtSearch Engine (Visual Basic) Use the Options.MaxWordsToRetrieve property

dtSearch Engine (C/C++) Use the maxWordsToRetrieve member of dtsOptions

dtSearch Engine (Java) Use the maxWordsToRetrieve member of the Options object

The space required for words in a search request is allocated as needed, so the maxWordsToRetrieve limit specifies the maximum amount of memory that will be allocated for a search.

Unless you search for a term like *a*, it is very unusual to get anywhere near this limit even with huge databases, because the number of words you retrieve is generally a function of the specificity of the search rather than the size of the database.