One of the greatest features of SharePoint in my opinion has always been the search capability, but out of the box you cannot index the content of PDF documents but the ability to achieve this is freely available with the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms, the documentation for installing this is also available on the Adobe website but has not yet been updated for SharePoint 2010.
So through this post I will show how to install and configure the iFilter for PDF, the first step is to make sure the PDF icon shows up when you upload a PDF file if not how to achieve this is here.
You may also wish to check out this post if every time you click on a PDF it only offers a save button.
So now we have covered all the prerequisites we can now continue with our configuration. Once the iFilter is downloaded extract the MSI installer file and install this on your SharePoint servers.
The next step is to navigate to Central Admin | Manage service applications | Search Service Application and once there click on “file types” to add the PDF file type.
The next step is to make a registry change so as always be careful as this can have an adverse effects on your server if you make a mistake. First of all start up regedit and navigate to:- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Setup\Filters, right click on the filters folder and create a new key and enter ‘.pdf’ as the value do not forget the full stop. Next enter the following values to your new key:-
<REG_SZ> Default = <value not set>
<REG_SZ> Extension = pdf
<REG_DWORD> FileTypeBucket = 1
<REG_SZ> MimeTypes = application/pdf
You should end up with the new key as illustrated below
Next navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeServer\14.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension
Just one key to enter here, right click and choose new key and again enter ‘.PDF’ as the value double click on the default REG_SZ and enter {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603} as the value data.
The final step is to restart your SharePoint server and initiate a full crawl, all of your PDF files will now be indexed and searchable.
Dave
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7 comments
3 pings
Tim
September 20, 2010 at 7:05 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
I love your blog! Great info for my new SP2010 install.
I have 2 questions about this post;
-For the last step of editing the registry, you show using REG_SZ – but I see all my other keys in this area are REG_MULTI_SZ, is this normal?
-In the first editing the registry step you said “‘.pdf’ as the value do not forget the full stop.” – what do you mean by “do not forget the full stop”?
Dave Coleman
September 20, 2010 at 7:11 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Hi Tim
I have not seen Reg_Multi_SZ but my advice would be try it and see as for the second question what i meant by Do not forget the full stop was do not put PDF but put .PDF
glad you enjoy the blog much more to come
Dave
Tim
September 21, 2010 at 5:09 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Thanks for the quick feedback Dave!
I went ahead with just using REG_SZ, and after my reboot last night things look good and are working great. I’ll look more into the _Multi_ later.
tim viec nhanh
November 21, 2010 at 2:04 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Glorious learn, I simply handed this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on that. And he truly purchased me lunch because I found it for him smile So let me rephrase that: Thanks for lunch! Anyway, in my language, there aren’t a lot good supply like this.
Jason
January 17, 2011 at 6:04 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
This is the first – of many – PDF iFilter posts that I’ve followed that’s actually worked. Lack of information out there on how to get this working with SharePoint 2010.
With your permission, I’d like to mirror the information here on my personal blog for reference (http://sharedpointing.blogspot.com) Otherwise I’ll just link back.
Thanks once again.
Bob
March 1, 2011 at 8:32 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Is there a way to map indexed PDF Properties and return them in Search results. PDFs are crawled and Content is indexed and Title, Author and Subject are searchable, but not keywords. I need to be able to map the properties in Central Admin and Subsequently Display them them in Search Results and display them as a Facet.
Forrest
September 20, 2011 at 5:47 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Working! And now my “duh”…
I’ve got Foundation on SQL Server (not Express) and SearchServerExpress with all the latest updates on Win2K8 R2. It’s a single development machine.
Is the Dword name “FileTypeBucket = 1″ as in the picture or just “FileTypeBucket”. Both seem to work. I assumed the latter and that’s what I’m using.
My errors were that some of the PDFs have security settings that disallow indexing. So, when I thought I should see 7 files based on the searched word/phrase, I only received 5. When I open one of the secure files, that word/phrase is searchable… but not found by the crawler.
The lesson learned: I’ll have to test a lot more and pre-define the security of our PDFs in the system if I want everything to always be retrieved by the search.
Free PDF Guide to Marketing on Twitter | www.jonsblog.com
September 7, 2010 at 9:12 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
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October 3, 2010 at 8:40 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
[...] Setup Guide for PDF iFilter in SharePoint 2010 [...]
SharePoint 2010: Recopilatorio de enlaces interesantes (XII)! « Pasión por la tecnología…
October 3, 2010 at 8:42 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
[...] Setup Guide for PDF iFilter in SharePoint 2010 [...]