Cannot use a CONTAINS or FREETEXT predicate on table or indexed view because it is not full-text indexed

Question

I am getting following error in my SQL server 2008 R2 database:

Cannot use a CONTAINS or FREETEXT predicate on table or indexed view 'tblArmy' because it is not full-text indexed.

Answer 1

1. Make sure you have full-text search feature installed.

2. Create full-text search catalog (if needed)

   First check if any catalog already exists

     select *   from sys.fulltext_catalogs 

   If no catalog is found create one

     use [DatabaseName]   create fulltext catalog FullTextCatalog as default 

   you can verify that the catalog was created in the same way as above

3. Create full-text search index.

     create fulltext index on Production.ProductDescription(Description)   key index PK_ProductDescription_ProductDescriptionID 

   Before you create the index, make sure:
   - you don't already have full-text search index on the table as only one full-text search index allowed on a table
   - a unique index exists on the table. The index must be based on single-key column, that does not allow NULL.
   - full-text catalog exists. You have to specify full-text catalog name explicitly if there is no default full-text catalog.

You can do step 2 and 3 in SQL Sever Management Studio. In object explorer, right click on a table, select Full-Text index menu item and then Define Full-Text Index... sub-menu item. Full-Text indexing wizard will guide you through the process. It will also create a full-text search catalog for you if you don't have any yet.

You can find more info at MSDN

After following the steps you need a few minutes so that the full text search index is created (this depends on the size of the table and column data)

Answer 2

A workaround for CONTAINS: If you don't want to create a full text Index on the column, and performance is not one of your priorities you could use the LIKE statement which doesn't need any prior configuration:

Example: find all Products that contains the letter Q:

SELECT ID, ProductName FROM [ProductsDB].[dbo].[Products] WHERE [ProductsDB].[dbo].[Products].ProductName LIKE '%Q%'