This is one of those most recurring questions: how to support PDF in SharePoint; both adding an icon in the list view and to let the Indexing Search Server crawls them.
These subjects have already been discussed here and here so I will not talk more about this. But editing the Regedit is boring and take some times (think about a farm where you need to check on all your indexing servers).
I propose here a stsadm command to automate the deployment.
Good points:
- This takes care whether Office Search (including MSSX, the free version) or WSS Search is used.
- Not limited to pdf file extension.
- Ensure the iFilter product is installed on the indexing server (otherwise add an entry in the SharePoint Logs and in the stsadm console).
- Deploy the icon on all the Web Front-End servers.
- Built-in support for PDF and accepts Foxit PDF Filter, Adobe (search for 64-bit and fallback to 32-bit), PDFlib TET Filter or another you specified yourself.
- If any changes are detected, it will restart the search service (Office Search or WSS Search).
Usage:
Add "pdf" file extension and add the built-in icon file (
). Register Foxit (specify Foxit, Adobe or PDFlib) as the filter used to crawls the pdf file.
stsadm -o searchfilter -ext pdf -filter Foxit –icon
Add "pdf" file extension and deploy the specified icon on the front-ends. Register PDFlib as the filter used to crawls the pdf file.
stsadm -o searchfilter -ext pdf -filter PDFlib –iconfile "C:\Temp\icpdf.gif"
Add "dwf" file extension (Autodesk Design Web Format), deploy the specified icon file on all the front-ends, use the specified mime type and register the specified filter (the CLASSID of the product, here I use DWF iFilter).
stsadm -o searchfilter -ext dwf –iconfile "C:\Temp\icdwf.gif" -mime application/dwf,application/x-dwf,drawing/x-dwf,image/vnd.dwf,image/x-dwf -filter {D4AA3B39-7393-4A19-A4B5-2749DB0F4ECB}
Add "msg" file extension and lets the program find the filter and the mime type to use (works only if at least one of your indexing servers has installed a filter).
stsadm -o searchfilter –ext msg
Oh by the way, did I tell you which PDF Filter is the better? Takes a look for a comparison:
http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2008/12/10/pdf-ifilter-battle-foxit-vs-adobe-64bit-version.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/ifilter/archive/2007/11/14/foxit-vs-adobe-pdf-ifilter-32-bit-only.aspx
http://codeforfuture.com/2009/05/22/finding-best-sharepoint-pdf-ifilter-64-bit/
Download source code and WSP package from the project on codeplex: http://notesforsearchfilter.codeplex.com/