# Elastic search over an already existing lucene index

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-over-an-already-existing-lucene-index/6704>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 14, 2012, 11:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-over-an-already-existing-lucene-index/6704 "2012-02-14T11:34:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ramprakash\_Ramamoort](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ramprakash_ramamoort/32/2997_2.png) [@Ramprakash\_Ramamoort](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Ramprakash_Ramamoort)\
**Post date:** [February 14, 2012, 11:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-over-an-already-existing-lucene-index/6704/1 "2012-02-14T11:34:52Z")

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I have a system that uses lucene. Now for a few reasons I would like to add a distributed search feature over it.

The question is can I use the existing lucene index created by the IndexWriter of lucene, for searching with elastic search or should I create a new index using ES's IndexWriter. Do note that the Lucene version we have used is 2.3.1. Any help would be appreciated.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elastic-search-over-an-already-existing-lucene-index/6704/2 "2017-07-06T03:39:28Z")

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