From an e-mail from Kent Fitch in the thread "*Detecting index existance* "
Try IndexReader static method indexExists: http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/api/org/apache/lucene/index/IndexReader.html#indexExists(java.lang.String)<http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/api/org/apache/lucene/index/IndexReader.html#indexExists%28java.lang.String%29> Can you condition how you set the rewrite (create!?) flag based upon the return from this call? Hope this helps Erick