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Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

As you may know, SharePoint includes filters to index many file types (Office docs, web pages, Tiff images, Visio diagrams, XML, etc.). What's missing out of the box is the ability to index Adobe Acrobat files. However, Adobe does provide a free IFilter for download at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611. This IFilter works for both SharePoint 2001 and 2003 and will scan readable text in Acrobat files for indexing.

There are a few steps that you have to do to get this working:

First, find the pdf16.gif icon (look in Google Images if you don't have it). Open the SharePoint Central Administration page, and then navigate to Site Settings > Configure Search and Indexing > Include File Types (in the General Content Settings and Indexing Status section). Add the pdf extension, and copy that image to the \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES directory on your SharePoint server. Next, edit the \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\XML\DOCICON.XML file and add this entry in the setting with the others:

<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="pdf16.gif"/>

Update (Dec. 22, 2004):

There are some good guidelines here that you should review to ensure that your PDF files will appear in search results:

http://www.searchtools.com/info/pdf.html

Published Friday, January 16, 2004 11:45 AM by legault
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Comments

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"you might have to reboot the server!" LOL. Its statements like that that give Microsoft products a bad rap. How about restarting the Indexing service first?
Friday, January 16, 2004 9:00 PM by Anonymous

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You don't have to reboot the server, just restart IIS :) Here's my post on the topic of getting the icons to show up if you need a little more direction: http://blogs.msdn.com/lauraj/archive/2004/01/21/61187.aspx Keep writing about SharePoint, it's great!
Thursday, January 22, 2004 11:43 AM by Anonymous

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Hey, there's a KB article on this now! http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;832809
Thursday, January 22, 2004 7:32 PM by Anonymous

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Tbanks for the tips Laura! A lot more helpful and cordial than the sass the first guy was dishing. ;-)
Sunday, January 25, 2004 10:19 PM by Anonymous

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Do you install iFilters on the SQL Server or on the IIS Server?
Thursday, June 03, 2004 4:34 AM by Anonymous

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Hi Rohan. IFilters must be installed on the same server where SPS itself is installed, unless you are running a small server farm deployment where another server with SPS is running the Index component.
Thursday, June 03, 2004 8:56 PM by legault

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I am actually trying to have Tiffs indexed. At the moment it's not happening. I have installed Office 2003 document imaging components on the server that is running WSS (not SPS this should work according to the instructions on http://www.wssfaq.com), and Index Server is definitely running. Any ideas? I just wondered that since the documents are actually residing in the SQL server does the server (i.e. not the same server) that is running SQL not the one that does the indexing? No-one seems to be clear on this, perhaps everyone else has everything on one server?!
Friday, June 04, 2004 4:08 AM by Anonymous

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OK, I've found the answer now: http://wss.collutions.com/Lists/FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=126 The iFilter needs to be on the database server not the WSS/SPS server (if they are different). You also need to refresh the index if documents were in the content database before adding the iFilter. The article reference above explains all this.
Friday, June 04, 2004 4:14 AM by Anonymous

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This is somewhat confusing, isn't it? Here's a snippet from the SPS Admin Help file: - If you have Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 installed, you can use the search features included with SharePoint Portal Server to search your Web sites from a portal site. - If you are running Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Windows SharePoint Services uses the SQL Server 2000 full-text searching features to search for Web site content. I need to do more research on the differences between search technologies with SPS and WSS.
Friday, June 04, 2004 10:30 AM by Anonymous

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I am using the PDF I-Filter and it is indexing and returning results. However, I want to be able to search the metadata specific to the PDF Document Properties that are defined in the PDF document. How can you search on this metadata rather than just the PDF content and filename? Metadata such as Author, Title and Subject for instance would be useful. Does this limitation have anything to do with the I-Filter not being able to search WSS Streams?
Friday, June 11, 2004 2:31 PM by Anonymous

#

If you are talking about PDF specific metadata, there is information about searching on these properties in the readme file for the IFilter. However, I believe this info is specific to searching with Index Server and not SharePoint. I also don't believe SharePoint promotes PDF properties like it does with Office documents. However, if you index these PDF files with built-in metadata fields or custom ones, you can search on those individual properties within SharePoint. There's a great tip on MSD2D on searching custom metadata fields: http://www.msd2d.com/Content/Tip_viewitem.aspx?section=Sharepoint&category=Development&id=dbc1f281-3550-4f7e-a063-12d4683c2ff2
Monday, June 14, 2004 9:14 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I see the comment above about the small server farm deployment, bbut we're planning an extended large server farm deployment where we have SPS, WSS, Search, Index/Job and SQL all on different servers.

In this scenario, which of the servers do we install the iFilter on, and which do we install the icons on. Intuitivley I would have thought that the iFilter goes on the Index server and the icons go on the SPS/WSS/Search servers, but I'm always suspicious about my intuition...
Tuesday, August 03, 2004 9:22 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I think your intuition is right on Andy! Let me know if it works out different than you expect.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004 3:23 PM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Andy>
We use a multiple server configuration too.
We have 2 servers that we use as both web and search servers.
That is where i installed the icons.
Guess you have to install them on the web - server. (Search has nothing to do with icons.)


Tuesday, August 31, 2004 1:59 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hey thanks for the indexing solutions! They came definitely in handy.

Appreciate it!
Sunday, October 03, 2004 8:53 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

btw you dont even have to restart IIS
Tuesday, October 05, 2004 8:26 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I'm trying to set up a subsite for a team's use. I am able to search all documents except .pdf files for content within the document. Upline at the main portal site, that document from the subsite pulls up by only content within the .pdf, so I know the filter is installed. Can someone explain why the lower-level site can't search .pdf files loaded to it by content while higher sites can? I'm beating my head against a wall...
Thursday, October 07, 2004 10:18 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

mbpatterson: When you search from the Portal, you are using the SharePointPortal Server Search engine, which is more powerful than the full-text indexes that are used when you do a search in a Windows SharePoint Services Site (which uses SQL Server Full-Text Search). Only SPS implements iFilters for proprietary document formats, like PDF files.
Thursday, October 07, 2004 10:57 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

So if I want this group to be able to search within the .pdf files, I have to have a separate portal site, not just a subsite. Greeeaaaat. Thank you so much for the quick reply!
Thursday, October 07, 2004 11:02 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

mbpatterson: I'm wrong, sorry! I assumed WSS Sites didn't use iFilters, but I just did a search both in a WSS Site and the Portal, and both returned the contents from a sample PDF file. You might want to ensure that Full-Text Indexing is enabled in SQL and for WSS Sites (via Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration -> Configure full-text search).
Thursday, October 07, 2004 11:31 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Figured out the issue - the IFilter was installed on the front-end server. After the admin moved it to the database server, it began indexing and returning results properly. Thank you for the help!
Thursday, October 07, 2004 1:38 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I have installed the iFilter, added the document type to the indexed documents, and yet cannot find the content of any PDFs.

I can find them if I search for a word within the filename, but not if I search for a word within the content.

Is this how it is supposed to be?
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 3:59 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Nik: Are you using a multiple-server configuration? Have you given the index time to rebuild?
Tuesday, October 12, 2004 9:07 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

GMAN, I had a similar problem and I found two ways to successfully search metadata in PDF's.

1) Create an Office document, add the metadata, and then convert it to PDF using the icon in the program.

2) On an existing PDF document, open the document choose file--> document properties, click description on the left window, enter keywords etc. on the right window, save the document, and re-index.

What did not work—

1) Right clicking on a PDF document, selecting properties, clicking the summary tab, then entering the metadata--(this was my initial problem)

2) Opening a PDF document from a SharePoint search, and modifying the document’s metadata. Not sure why, but it always reverts to the old version when I re-index.

Hope this helps.

Ryan
Friday, October 22, 2004 3:23 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hi,

First of all, Thanx for your valuable information for PDF indexing in sharepoint. I did all the thing mentioned and start functioning but not working pdf search on custom define metadata. It's not giving me any result.

It will be great help for me.

Thanks & Regards\Rajendra
Thursday, November 04, 2004 9:58 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Rajendra: see this link on how to configure searching for custom metadata:

http://www.msd2d.com/Content/Tip_viewitem.aspx?section=Sharepoint&category=Development&id=dbc1f281-3550-4f7e-a063-12d4683c2ff2
Monday, November 08, 2004 8:19 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I am having the same issue as Nik above, with a bunch of these warnings in my gatherer log:

sps://ech-share/site$$$category/bucketid=1/itemid={96D97CAE-C7DE-4091-A003-FD4E80D41CEB}

Some parts of this document cannot be accessed, and are not included in the index.

How can I tell if it is the PDF documents it is failing on?
Thursday, November 11, 2004 9:44 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Dwayne: If your gatherer log is configured to track successfully indexed documents, you should be able to see them in the list.

Are you using MSDE or SQL Server? This may also be a problem with no support for SQL Full Text Indexing (it may not be installed).
Tuesday, November 16, 2004 11:34 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Under Sharepoint 2003 I don't see where to add the .pdf extension for searching. I don't see Site Settings > Configure Search and Indexing > Include File Types (in the General Content Settings and Indexing Status section). Sorry to be dense. Could someone help me out?
Tuesday, December 07, 2004 8:11 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

William: If you do not see the Site Settings link from the main Portal page, this is usually because you are not an Administrator (probably not likely in your case).

Alternatly, on the SPS server there is a link to the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page in the Programs group for SharePoint in the Start menu. From there, you can go to "List and manage portal sites" in the "Portal Site and Virtual Server Configuration", and select "Manage Portal Site Properties" in the dropdown for the site you want to manage (where you will see the "Configure Search and Indexing" section).
Tuesday, December 07, 2004 9:52 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hi,
Even i have the same problem in searching of pdf (SPS2003). i have include the file type and changed the xml file as mentioned...even then the search is not working..it says...

No results were found that match your query. Please consider the following:
Is your query spelled correctly?

i have only one document library(in Home)which holds all the pdf nearly 1000...it is b'cos of that i'm not getting the search results?
Wednesday, December 22, 2004 2:12 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Karthikeyan: I assume you've installed the iFilter on the server? Are you using SPS or WSS? SQL Server or MSDE? You should also review the PDF searching guidelines at http://www.searchtools.com/info/pdf.html.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004 8:32 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Eric: Is it mandatory to install iFilter? Because in one port of the server, search is working, so far i didn't install iFilter. I'm using SPS and SQL Server.
Since i have converted the pdf from word document the title in pdf document property is like "Introduction.doc". Also it is mandatory to give all the metadatas(description,keywords,size..)?
Wednesday, December 22, 2004 11:18 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Karthikeyan: you only need the Adobe iFilter if you want to search the contents of a .pdf file. You don't need it if you just want to search the metadata values defined for a Document Library when you index the document.

Custom metadata fields can be created as mandatory or optional. Certain system fields (size, modified, created by, etc.) are populated automatically.
Thursday, December 23, 2004 9:32 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Eric: Thank you Eric. It's working fine for one port, for other port even area level search is not working. I have to enable any search options.
Sunday, January 02, 2005 11:45 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hi,
I have tried to search within documents. The first two sites I am configuring on SPS 2003, I can search with the documents. But the third one which I have tried, no matter what setting I configure it to, it is not searching in the documents. It searches the document for some words but if I type any specific word from the document to search it doesnt return any results.Please help
Friday, March 11, 2005 12:51 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

How to display result of custom PDF metadata in SharePoint server 2003 site or SharePoit Services 2003 site .

I would be very thankful, if anybody tells me the solution for this kind of issue.

Help is highly appreciated.

fgruenbaum@gmail.com



Tuesday, April 05, 2005 11:52 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

fgruenbaum: If you are talking about metadata stored in the PDF file itself, you'll need to manually copy that information into similar custom metadata fields that are defined in your Document Library.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005 3:13 PM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Eric Legault,
Thank you very much for your solution and answer.
Fernando Gruenbaum
Friday, April 08, 2005 3:49 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I have the SharePoint Portal to search PDF files, however when the search list is displayed a large icon is displayed for pdf. When viewing the pdf link through the document library it is the correct small size but a larger icon is displayed on the search results screen. I have only one pdf.gif file on the host server but still get the wrong icon being displayed?
Friday, April 22, 2005 5:39 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Ignore above comment - Hav restarted server and it now picks up new icon
Friday, April 22, 2005 6:46 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

After I've installed the pdf ifilter I now see this error in the gatherer log
details: "The address could not be found, (0x80041205 - Access is denied.
Check that the Default Content Access Account in SharePoint Central
Administration is correct, or follow the "Exclude and Include Content" link
to add a rule to specify the proper crawling account to access this URL. )".
It's interesting though because I only see this message on pdf files. In the gatherer log, all the pdf files have this error message. Other file types are being indexed correctly. In fact, they are returned when I do search.

I did check the default content access account and added a rule to specify
the crawling account. I did not change the account at all. It's the same
account that I used to index successfully prior to installing the ifilter.

I have added the pdf file type to be included in the search.

What is happening here? Do I need SQL Server in order for SPS to index pdf files? I have only MSDE installed with SPS on the same server.

Pls help.
Thursday, July 07, 2005 4:16 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Peter: I'm fairly certain you cannot use MSDE, because you need the Full Text Search capability of SQL Server. There's some more good info in section 07.06 on this page:

http://wss.collutions.com/Lists/FAQ/Offline.aspx
Friday, July 08, 2005 10:41 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hello

I have an issue where Incremental indexing is taking about the same amount of time as full test indexing. There are about 150'000 docs and Full Text takes 12 hours as does Incremental. only 10-20 docs have changed though.

Any Assistance appreciated.

Rob
Monday, July 11, 2005 3:40 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

To add to the previous post, I have searched the SQL Database and have noticed that only 4 documents have the TimeLastModified value as todays value. A full text index ran on Sunday without failure or error. I am wondering if there is a particular flag that I should look out for in the Docs Table of SQL which specifies that "this file has been indexed". The documents in question are all PDFs and I have Ifilter 5.0 as the PDF filter.

Once again, Any Assistance will be much appreciated.

Rob
Monday, July 11, 2005 4:57 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Rob: Check out this KB article:

Crawls take a longer time to be completed when you use a third-party single-threaded IFilter in SharePoint Portal Server 2003:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;894079

I'm assuming here that the PDF filter is single-threaded and is thus applicable.
Monday, July 11, 2005 3:25 PM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Thanks for the feedback Eric. Unfortunately I have already tried this. It didn't help the problem. I was using Ifilter 5.0. I have subsequently upgraded to Ifilter 6 but the issue still persists. Indexing Incrementally takes just as long as a full index when only 4 docs changed. Why is it reindexing all documents (150'000+ PDF docs) when it has already successfully run a full index. It should only reindex the Modified docs.

Looking into the Gatherer log, I noticed Thousands of Retry entries for Type - Modify. However, querying SQL for the doc names and date last modified, some of them were last modified over a year ago, indexed yesterday and are now being reindexed.

Frustrated!!

Rob
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 3:53 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hohooo!!!

It seems to be working now. I moved the Indexing and Job Server to a new server. I also had to edit the Registry MaxDownloadSize to 70 (Default is 16MB) as some of the PDF docs are 50MB in size. This forced me to increase the Registry Timeout value too as the maximum file size was increased but timed out while attempting to download it. This is only set to 20 Seconds by default. I increased this to 720 based on double the time it needs to download the 50MB PDF docs. Microsoft issued me with the patch mentioned by Eric. Finally, I installed IFilter 6, a free download from Adobe's site.

The result is that indexes which took hole weekends to update are now indexed in a matter of minutes.

Relieved

Rob
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 6:08 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Rob: Good job, Rob! Thanks for sharing your tips, I'm sure they can help us all if we're ever faced with your situation.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005 8:04 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Since this thread has been going on more than a year I hope you don't mind a few more questions. Seems you and Rob may be a couple of the rare individuals that have a clue about SPS 2003 indexing!

I admin the Indexing and Search of 2 medium SPS Farms, one w/ a single Intranet Portal the other w/6 Portals and multitudes of WSS sites. Needless to say I've seen all kinds of issues with search and indexing but the most frustrating are with pdfs. Here's my question(s):

1) How or why would the MaxDownloadSize limit cause the crawls to keep re-trying and re-indexing the same documents that have already been crawled and not modified. I believe I have read MS docs that state the 16MG limit would be reached and the document would not be crawled again. I really don't want to increase the amount crawled because some of our indexes are already huge.

2) What are other changes could users be making that would cause all the documents in a specific library to be recrawled? Template changes, folder renames things like that? (Don't know the front side of it very well, am really a dba/dev type)

3) When the Portal content index is being updated isn't the gatherer crawling the Web Site/Server and loading copies of the documents into the Windows/temp folder on that server as opposed to the SQL Server? Why else would the iFilter need to be installed on the web server? For search?

4) Promise last question! - I have one Portal index with say 20,000 docs that is only 15MG in size yet another index of 5000 docs is almost 100MG. Include/exclude rules are the same. What could cause this size difference?

Any help or suggestions will be appreciated!

Thanks and I promise to share my hotfix (If PSS ever releases it) for when a PDF throws your filter daemon into an endless loop!
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 11:58 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Al:
1) No idea, sorry.
2) This probably has something to do with the logic behind Adaptive and Incremental crawls, but I don't know enough about them to describe exactly what they do when and why. But this is not really dependant on user action, rather server indexing schedules.
3) I believe the iFilter needs to be installed on the server that is running the Indexing component. It knows how to communicate with the data in SQL Server that it actually crawls.
4) Perhaps more document libraries with versioning enabled on the larger index?
Friday, July 29, 2005 2:52 PM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I installed pdf ifilter on web server and I can search pdf content in WSS site. But if I try to serach the same content keyword on portal, it doesn't return the same pdf file which should be in the result.

I don't know which part I missed.
Thanks,
Tuesday, August 02, 2005 5:08 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hi,

I have a different problem with PDF's and hope someone can help out here.

When searching against a custom metadata field in the document library containing my PDF's (Publication Date) I get no results (not so with office documents in the same library), however, when searching against a custom metadata field containing a list of divisions I have no problem. Is Ifilter / SPS substituting any fields here?

Any help here would be much appreciated.
Thursday, August 11, 2005 1:58 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Stella: is the IFilter installed on the same server that is running SQL Server?
Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:51 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Doug: I'm not sure I understand. What is the difference between your divisions field and the field you cannot search on? Is the former stored in a List, and the latter in a Document Library??
Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:54 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Eric: Thanks for the reply.

The 'divisions' field is a drop down list, the field I am having problems with is a 'Publication Date' field which is a 'datetime' - format: 'dateonly'.

I managed to get a whole bunch of other fields to index for the PDF's by installing the SPS 2003 post-service pack 1 hotfix (not much documentation about this) - I recommend to all that are having PDF problems to install this (link to kb at bottom of this post).

The only problem now seems to be searching against a 'datetime' field for a PDF. Also I am having problems with PDFs that were created with 'Adobe Acrobat Image Conversion Plugin 5.0' - SPS2003 has trouble indexing these - I have set MaxGrow and ConnectionTimeOut in the registry and now get constant 'retry' messages.

Sorry for the long post, help you can help me out here.

Here is the link for the SPS2003 post SP1 hotfix and related KB articles (they are on my site as I waited an age to get it from MS!) http://www.birchtree.co.za/SPS2003/Maintanence/PDF/

Let me know if you have trouble getting there!

Doug
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 2:08 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

wrong link - right one: http://www.birchtree.co.za/SPS2003/maintenance/
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 3:26 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Doug: Sorry, I've got nothing. I never search for PDFs, and you have far more experience in this matter now than I do! Maybe try posting/searching your issue in microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005 9:03 AM by legault

# Indexing Adobe PDF Files' Content in Database with SPS 2003?

is it possible??
Tuesday, November 01, 2005 9:15 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Zeero: No - SharePoint cannot crawl content located in databases, even SQL Server (not counting the content it manages itself in SQL Server, of course).
Tuesday, November 01, 2005 9:31 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I use the iFilters to expose metadata to SPS 2003. I use the PDF+ iFilter from ifiltershop.com in conjunction with the Adobe PDF iFilter. I have custom XMP metadata that the iFilter will expose and I have validated this through the FiltDump.exe utility included in the MS Platform SDK.

In a nutshell, the problem I experience is this: I run a full indexing job and my custom metadata is not available under 'Manage properties of crawled documents' in Site Settings. That is to say, my iFilter is exposing my metadata, but SharePoint seems to ignore it entirely. Therefore, I cannot truly expose my metadata to SPS Advanced Search in the way that would make it truly powerful.

This seems to me an example of MS being openly antagonistic to other document formats.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005 12:22 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Benson: I don't know how to help you - iFilter development is over my head at the moment. I assume you've absorbed this article?

How to Write a Filter for Use by SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Other Microsoft Search-Based Products:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odc_SP2003_ta/html/ODC_HowToWriteaFilter.asp?frame=true
Wednesday, November 02, 2005 1:02 PM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

I spent some time setting up SharePoint 2003 to search PDF files. I've blogged about it here:
http://sharepoint.site88.com/?p=6
Wednesday, February 08, 2006 9:49 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Well it isn't much more to it then what has allrdy been said here, to get the basic search function that is. Simple steps.
Add the icon to following directory "program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\60\template\images" and to the docicon.xml file. As stated earlier.
Install the Ifiliter program on both sql and web server, sence it is a difference in what search method u use depending on where u are located, everything is depending on how your site structure looks like, it might be enough to just run it on either one of the servers but i have installed it on both and it works fine in all areas.
If you add the pdf search function in an existing structure you have reset your index completely to make pdf files appear in your search result, just doing a remake of a full index will not do the trick.

Thanks for a well done blogg with alot of useful information, keep going.
Friday, March 03, 2006 2:13 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hi, indexing a pdf goes for me, but i would like to make the indexed pdf's available with a link, but not the name of the document. It should be something like http://www.test.be/AD39805JSDBS04928U (this document does not exist ;-))

How can I do this with SharePoint??

Grtz

Fré
Monday, March 20, 2006 2:30 AM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Frederik: How I understand your question is that you want a column in a Document Library view that displays the full URL to the document? This really has nothing to do with just .pdf files. Unfortunately, there are no built-in fields that I can find that will display the document URL, nor can any of the functions available for calculated fields be used to display a URL either. The only thing I can thing of is building a Document Library Event Sink that can populate a custom field with the document's actual URL whenever a document is saved/edited in the library.
Thursday, March 23, 2006 8:55 AM by legault

# SPS 2003 vs Portal 2003 PDF searching

I've read through the comments and am still confused. Can I get search results from SPS 2003 that include PDFs? I seem to see where I could if I was using Portal 2003, but can the basic SPS 2003 be able to search PDFs?

Soory if this has already covered in the commenst.

Thanks,
GwK
Wednesday, March 29, 2006 12:53 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Gary: Yes, PDFs can be indexed with both WSS and SPS, as long as you have the IFilter installed.
Friday, March 31, 2006 12:34 PM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Eric: Thanks very much for the clear and rapid response!
Friday, March 31, 2006 5:42 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Hi I'm having a nightmare with getting the Adobe ifilter to work. I have followed http://support.microsoft.com/?id=555209 and PDFs still aren't appearing in the search results. Word documents are fine, the contents are being indexed. The search picks up words from the title of the PDF doc but not the content. I am having a similar problem with a DWF ifilter. Can you help?
Monday, May 15, 2006 1:02 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Apologies, I should say that I am using SPS 2003, Windows 2003 and SQL server 2005. Adobe PDF ifilter Version 6. thanks
Monday, May 15, 2006 1:04 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

SteveP: Are you using a multiple server farm? From what I remember, the iFilter needs to be installed on the front end web server. Also see http://wss.collutions.com/Lists/FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=126. I also haven't tried it with SQL 2005, so I'm not sure if that makes a difference.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 8:11 AM by legault

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

SteveP: Did you ever get this working? I'm vaing he same problem - SPS 2003 SP2, IFilter 6.0, & SQL 2005. HELP !?!?!?!
Friday, June 30, 2006 2:01 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Does this PDF indexing filter work with the free SharePoint services?

Tried both SQL2005 and then SQL2000 on the back end and can not get either to work. Wondering if this requires the full Portal Server product?
Thursday, July 27, 2006 2:29 PM by Anonymous

# re: Indexing Adobe PDF Files In SPS 2003

Kevin and Alex: Yes, you can search Adobe PDF files in WSS withouth requiring SharePoint Portal Server, as long as you have the Adobe iFilter installed. See here for more info:

WSS FAQ - How do I ensure that .pdf files are included...:
http://www.asaris.de/sites/walsh/Lists/WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=12
Friday, September 15, 2006 10:34 AM by legault
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