Can't retrieve a property on search results. (Property doesn't exist or is used in a manner inconsistent with schema settings)

Question

I have SP2016 Farm with a site collection and I created a library and activated the rating feature to rate my documents. Then, I'm trying to sort the search results with AverageRating property, but I'm getting this error: "(Property doesn't exist or is used in a manner inconsistent with schema settings)" The weird thing is that I can get the value with the SearchQueryTool so the property is indexing correctly.

I can sort with other properties and it's working ok.

Can anyone give me some help on this, please? Thanks,

Answer 1

You are unable to sort by that field because, by default, AverageRating is not sortable.

If you look at Site Settings -> Search Schema (in Site Collection Administration section) -> Search for AverageRating and look at its properties. The Sortable value is set to No.

This is why you are able to see the value using the SearchQueryTool. You can pull the value, you just can't sort on it.

I would recommend, assigning the crawled property ows_AverageRating to one the RefinableDecimalXX managed properties and sort on that. Remember after you change the search schema you need to reindex the site.