There are various posts around on setting up MOSS 2007 to use the PDF IFilter, and some stuff on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as well. I’ve found a method which works for me, so I wanted to put this together in one place – not least of all so I can find it when out on site with a client.
Out of the box neither WSS 3 nor MOSS 2007 will index content located in Acrobat PDF files, so you need to set up the IFilter. I’ve also found that that PDF files loaded prior to the installation of the filter won’t be re-crawled automatically, so to be on the safe side you might want to kick off a full crawl.
Here is what I’ve found works for WSS 3.0:
- First, you need to download the Adobe PDF IFilter 6.0, which you can find at this URL. You should also get hold of a suitable Icon to use with PDFs, so that when they are listed in a document library they are easily recognisable. There is a 17 x 17 one available on the Adobe web site here.
- Once you’ve downloaded the IFilter, install it on your WSS 3.0 server, and then follow the instructions on registry settings in Microsoft KB Article 927675. I’ve always found that providing the Adobe IFilter installed properly, the only setting I need to add is the Search Extensions one listed in step 2. Also note step 5 re stopping and re-starting the search service.
- Now you need to set up the Icon file. If you downloaded the icon file in step 1 above, you will have a file called pdficon_small.gif. You need to copy this onto your WSS 3.0 server, into drive:\Program Files\Common FIles\Microsoft Shared\Web Server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES.
- Next you need to edit the XML file which WSS uses to link file extensions to icons. This file is called DOCICON.XML and is located at drive:\Program Files\Common FIles\Microsoft Shared\Web Server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML. Navigate to that folder and locate the file. I would suggest making a backup copy first, then opening the file in NotePad. You need to add a mapping key for PDFs at the bottom of the file, above the </ByExtension> closing tag. The new key will be <Mapping Key=”pdf” Value=”pdficon_small.gif” OpenControl=”"/> (note that XML is case sensitive so make sure you use same case as previous entries). Then save the file.
- That’s pretty much it, but if you already have PDFs uploaded to your WSS server I would recommend starting a full crawl. You can do the with STSAdm, the command syntax is Stsadm -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart . More on this on TechNet here.
February 26, 2008 at 8:36 am |
Hello,
I did all as written above – the icon is displayed, the registry keys present, full crawl done. However, no pdf in search results. Certainly, I do not expect the system to find a string in scanned documents (suppose there is some OCR needed – this would be maybe another good topic), but even if I upload a “Save doc as pdf”-from-MS-Word document, nothing.
Any ideas?
Btw, the article is very good.
Thanks!
Ravie.
June 18, 2009 at 9:15 pm |
Have you added the filetype to be searched something i missed when adding the ifilter doh… adobe 7+ comes with the ifilter built in so you can try a reinstall?
http://zebracube.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/how-to-add-sharepoint-pdf-icon/
February 26, 2008 at 3:13 pm |
[...] my earlier post on the subject, I referenced the downloadable version 6.0 IFilter. ServerGrrl’s post makes the point that [...]
February 26, 2008 at 3:16 pm |
Ravie
See my latest post today which talks about Acrobat Reader 8.0. It could be that the PDFs you are crawling aren’t readable by the version 6.0 IFilter so maybe try Acrobat Reader 8.0?
Derek
February 27, 2008 at 11:50 am |
Derek, thank you.
I’ll try the version mentioned and let you know.
Best regards,
Ravie.
February 27, 2008 at 1:16 pm |
Well, I tried the Servergrrl’s article, and no luck. It’s not working so far. I’ll try it once more
June 23, 2008 at 1:25 am |
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September 4, 2008 at 10:09 pm |
Hi there,
Thanks for the post.
I did install the filter.
But when I look for
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\GUID\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList
I could see up to the GUID .Under GUID I don’t see Gather directory .Should I add Gather\Search\Extension\ExtensList
thank you Gopa
September 5, 2008 at 9:32 am |
Gopa,
I don’t see how WSS Search is working correctly if you don’t have a set of subkeys under the GUID (which stands for Globally Unique ID of course). Under the subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList\ there will be a list of extensions which WSS search is crawling.
Derek
October 7, 2008 at 5:19 pm |
Thanks for the good blog post- However, I can’t even finish the install on my WSS 3.0 server, the iFilter install just “disappears” and there are processes running that I see in task manager for iFilter and setup.exe but they dont’ run! Any ideas? Thank you.
October 8, 2008 at 8:19 am |
Hi Chris,
I haven’t experienced any setup issues myself. Is it version 6 of IFilter you are trying to install? Just a wild guess – could it be permissions related (do you have admin rights on the server?).
Only other thing I could suggest would be if your problem is with the v6 IFilter, cancel the install process and install Acrobat Reader 8 or 9 instead, then configure WSS acordingly. A little more info on Acrobat reader 9 here http://workerthread.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/adobe-reader-9-available-works-fine-with-sharepoint/ .
Can’t guarantee anything though….
Derek
October 10, 2008 at 6:39 pm |
After I stoped my Search service. I was not able to restart search again. It kept giving me error that the DB already exists and it need to be an empty. Remove all tables and stored procedures. So I startted the search service using new DB. Also ran full crawl. But search is not working anymore on my site. Please help.
October 11, 2008 at 11:12 am |
Granada
I haven’t seen this error myself but there are a lot of posts/queries about it online. Try searching for the error message you are seeing and you will get lots of results, for example this one http://bit.ly/4b75rK and this one – http://technetlk.blogspot.com/2007/05/wsssearch.html . Could be you need to create a new search database.
Derek
October 14, 2008 at 12:12 am |
Hope this helps:
in Microsoft KB Article 927675 it says to edit the registry and check these SUBkeys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf
This registry subkey must contain the following registry entry:
• Name: Default
Type: REG_MULTI_SZ
Data: {4C904448-74A9-11D0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02}
•
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf
This registry subkey must contain the following registry entries:
• Name: Default
Type: REG_SZ
Data: (value not set)
• Name: Extension
Type: REG_SZ
Data: pdf
• Name: FileTypeBucket
Type: REG_DWORD
Data: 0×00000001 (1)
• Name: MimeTypes
Type: REG_SZ
Data: application/pdf
I had to double check my settings when I still couldn’t search PDF’s when I made the changes suggested. Sure enough, my GUID was this: {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}
I have version 9.0 of Adobe reader installed on the server.
I replaced this GUID {4C904448-74A9-11D0-AF6E-00C04FD8DC02} with this GUID {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}
Don’t change the GUID under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList\38
After that change and a reboot, I was searching PDF’s.
Also check that your application is using a search server. This is in addition to checking that your search server is running.
October 14, 2008 at 3:22 pm |
[...] it Easier Please? The two posts on this blog with the greatest number of hits are the one on configuring a PDF iFilter with WSS 3.0, and using Adobe Reader 9 with SharePoint. Almost every SharePoint implementation I’ve [...]
November 17, 2008 at 10:44 am |
[...] http://workerthread.wordpress.com/2008/01/03/configure-pdf-ifilter-in-wss-30/ [...]
December 9, 2008 at 10:18 pm |
The article ClaireGarrick pasted from solved my in-document searches issue for PDF’s. If you have run the ifilter 6.0 on the same machine as you have your database server on, then double check the keys and values mentioned in the article (and pasted in the post above), then the the net stop spsearch, net start spsearch the install is set.
Bad news is, any pdf’s you already uploaded don’t get in the index and I could not find a way to force a re-index. So I deleted and mass reloaded all the pdf’s. BAM… in document search was viable and everyone lived happily ever after.
To the poster above who asked about adding keys… don’t do it… I almost made that mistake. If the keys are not where the KB article says they are, you have a bad install of the ifilter 6.0 OR you are on the wrong server. Don’t laugh, I searched my local machine thinking i was remoted in to the server, not finding any keys, I almost created them… then I snapped out of my cluelessness and remoted into the wrong server, but this time I realized i was on the wrong server as soon as I did not see the key values. Once I brilliantly located the correct server, the only key value I had to add was the number “38″. And reload all the pdf’s.
December 10, 2008 at 9:17 am |
Kerry: regarding re-indexing PDFs uploaded before you install the filter, see point 5 of my original post – you can do this with the STSADM command STSADM -o spsearch -action fullcrawlstart
Derek
January 30, 2009 at 5:18 pm |
[...] of PDF, iFilter, WSS, MOSS etc and these visitors click through to one of the PDF related posts here, here and [...]
March 24, 2009 at 8:27 pm |
[...] Configure PDF IFilter in WSS 3.0 [...]
April 12, 2009 at 1:31 pm |
hi,
i had followed all the 5 steps as above.
i had successful installed and configured the IFilter.
After i done the crawl, i can get the full text search results for the pdf file.
but my problem is it cannot show the pdf icon for my pdf file,but it shown the IE icon.
what wrong with my setting?
thank you very much………….
April 13, 2009 at 9:36 am |
Bey: If you aren’t displaying the pdf icon, I would first check that the icon file (pdficon_small.gif or whatever yours is) is in the correct location \Program Files\Common FIles\Microsoft Shared\Web Server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES.
I would also double-check that you have correctly created the entry in \Program Files\Common FIles\Microsoft Shared\Web Server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\XML.
If you are sure that both of these are correct, then I would suggest performing an IISReset/Noforce (at a time suitable for your users of course) to see if this does the trick.
Derek
May 20, 2009 at 8:32 am |
[...] credits, this post is gathered from a few sources: Clearest post on .pdf search out there How to insert the pdf icon If this post doesn’t work out for you (SharePoint environments differ greatly) you could try [...]
June 4, 2009 at 4:35 pm |
[...] Bing search returned one of my blog posts in fourth place, as you can see [...]
June 21, 2009 at 10:37 pm |
very informative this posts shows some tweaks for 64 bit.. and some more ifilters that might be useful.
http://zebracube.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/pdf-ifilter-sharepoint/
June 25, 2009 at 10:56 am |
Thnx, installed it like you described, and it works!!
June 26, 2009 at 3:03 pm |
Thanks for the easy to follow steps, I am having difficulty with the “icon” piece. Did you have any issues with the icon not showing up immediately? Did you need to restart and Sharepoint services to get it to show properly?
Thanks
Brian
June 26, 2009 at 3:13 pm |
Hi Brian
I’ve seen some instances where IISReset/Noforce was required. Make sure you know what IISReset does and how it affects logged in users before you do this.
Derek