Windows Server 2012 and higher provides native support for the PDF iFilter, which enables indexing PDFs so you can search for specific text. Installing Adobe PDF iFilter breaks this feature. It overwrites the Windows Server 2012 native iFilter registry entry with the Adobe PDF iFilter registry entry. Adobe PDF IFilter is designed for technically savvy users or administrators who wish to index Adobe PDF documents with Microsoft indexing clients. But most PDFs today are text based and fully index-able. OCR isn't a default for the iFilter on-premises either it is a custom install. The default iFilter used on-premises is the same one used in Office 365 and will index more than metadata if the PDF contains index-able text. Plug-In for Search Engines Based on Microsoft's IFilter Index Interface. Foxit PDF IFilter is a robust implementation of Microsoft ® 's IFilter indexing interface. It works with all search and retrieval products supporting the IFilter interface (for example, SharePoint ® and SQL Server ®).Such products use format-specific filter programs (called IFilters) for particular file formats (for.

1. Microsoft Pdf Folder
2. Microsoft Pdf Filler

If you used spaces at the beginning of the line, your PDF iFilter may not display the information as expected. There needs to be a tab at the beginning of the line, not spaces. Therefore, I recommend that you copy an existing entry in the DOCICON.XML file and then modify it for your PDF iFilter. The Sitecore Content Search API uses the native Microsoft Windows IFilter interface to extract the text content from media files for indexing. However, to enable the Sitecore Content Search API to properly index the content in Adobe PDF files, you must install the Adobe PDF IFilter on every content management and content delivery server. Hi I am also having ifilter problems I cant even see how to call an ifilter, where do you specify which ifilter you are using this may also be part of your problem how dose it know to use the txt ifilter or the pdf ifilter, it may be posible that IFilter.GetText just gets the meta data and you still need to specify which ifilter is needed for the.txt which could pull the actual content of the.

I’m working on a 3 (or 4) part tutorial right now that requires parsing of PDF files. The code started to get big enough I decided to pull it out and turn it into a new post that I can use in the series (stay tuned).

There are several solutions for reading through various file formats. Math made simple free. The IFilter interface was defined to help Windows do search indexing on files for this purpose. There are lot’s of filter providers for various formats, including several from Microsoft. If you want to parse PDF files you’ll need to have a provider installed for that as well. The FoxIt IFilter download page has a provider that according to their website is free for client use (my case).

In looking around for some sample code I found a few examples that did close to what I wanted but didn’t have a lot of luck finding a C# example. I’ve pulled together various pieces of code to create a basic implementation for my (simple) needs. You can find some interesting links here:

Microsoft Pdf Folder

• Codeplex IFilter sample code in C++ (under MS-PL)
• P-Invoke definitions for IFilter and related members from www.pinvoke.net

The sample contains a class library for parsing the code and a console application that can be used to exercise the library against files. The code is built using a current internal build of VS2010 (stay tuned here for beta notice) but the key code (FilterCode.cs) should work fine on previous versions of VS and .NET Framework.

I’ve uploaded the solution to the MSDN code gallery here:

To use the sample, include FilterCode.cs in your project, create a new instance of FilterLibrary.FilterCode, and call the GetTextFromDocument method against the file you want to parse. If you have a filter installed for that document type, you will get back a StringBuilder with the text contents of the file.

Microsoft Pdf Filler

Enjoy!

An IFilter is a plugin that allows Microsoft's search engines to index various file formats (as documents, email attachments, database records, audio metadata etc.) so that they become searchable. Without an appropriate IFilter, contents of a file cannot be parsed and indexed by the search engine.

They can be obtained as standalone packages or bundled with certain software such as Adobe Reader,^{[Note 1]}LibreOffice, Microsoft Office^{[Note 2]} and OpenOffice.

It also refers to the software interface needed to implement such plugins.^[1]

How it works ^[2][3][edit]

An IFilter acts as a plug-in for extracting full-text and metadata for search engines. A search engine usually works in two steps:

1. The search engine goes through a designated place, e.g. a file folder or a database, and indexes all documents or newly modified documents, including the various types documents, in the background and creates internal data to store indexing result.
2. A user specifies some keywords he would like to search and the search engine answers the query immediately by looking up the indexing result and responds to the user with all the documents that contains the keywords.

During Step 1, the search engine itself doesn't understand format of a document. Therefore, it looks on Windows registry for an appropriate IFilter to extract the data from the document format, filtering out embedded formatting and any other non-textual data.

Search Engines[edit]

Windows Indexing Service and the newer Windows Search, Windows Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search, Internet Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Site Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology support indexing technology. Also, IFilters are used by SQL Server as a component of the SQL Server Full Text Search service.

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

1. ^Adobe provides only the 32-bit IFilter bundled with its Reader software. To install the 64-bit version, there is a standalone package at Acrobat for Windows Downloads Page.
2. ^Microsoft provides its Office IFilters bundled and available as standalone packages at Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs and 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack.

References[edit]

1. ^IFilter interface documentation on MSDN
2. ^Windows Indexing Service documentation on MSDN
3. ^Windows Search Service documentation on MSDN

External links[edit]

• Filter Central — Microsoft Search Filters Discussion Board;
• IFilter.org — Downloads and documentation;
• MSG IFilter — IFilter for Outlook Message Files (.MSG) for Windows Desktop Search;
• IFilterShop — Some IFilters available as free for non-commercial users.
• PDF iFilter Win x64 11.0.01 — Adobe PDF iFilter for 64bit Windows systems. Reader and Acrobat include iFilter for 32bit Windows systems.
• PDF IFilter — Foxit PDF IFilter. Works on Windows OS.
• PDFlib TET PDF IFilter — PDF IFilter from PDFlib. Works on Windows OS.
• IFilter Downloads — iFilter Downloads.
• [1] — Windows Search connector for IBM Lotus Notes.
• [2] Various IFilters.