Index and Search PDF Files in SharePoint Server 2010

Like Office SharePoint Server 2007, there’s no OOTB PDF iFilter in SharePoint Server 2010. If you add PDF as a file type for SharePoint Search, you will get the following result:

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You can see that only the file attributes are indexed.

You need to install a x64 PDF iFilter for this. There’re three PDF iFilter on market, Adobe, Foxit, and TET. You can refer to my earlier post for comparison. Since the registry name is changed in 2010, you may need to manually modify it to make the iFilters registered. Foxit recently updated their installer to reflect this change.

https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/

Quote from Foxit PDF iFilter change log:

Version Number: 1.0.0.3213

* Fixes a crash issue that is caused by embedded fonts.

* Adds the following registry settings in the installation program:  

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.pdf]

"Extension"=".pdf"

"FileTypeBucket"=dword:00000001

"MimeTypes"="application/pdf"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

@="{987f8d1a-26e6-4554-b007-6b20e2680632}"

So run the installer, and then restart SharePoint Server Search 14 service. This service name is subject to change when RTM, but you can easily get the idea.

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Recrawl the files.

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It worked. Please note the installer will not get you PDF icon file, you need to follow the steps here https://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/installation.html to download icon file and modify DOCICON.XML.

This also applies to Search Server 2010. FAST Search index PDF files OOTB, so you don’t need to go with these steps.

Jie Li

Technical Product Manager, SharePoint