Use Indexing service and IFilter to search PDF Files

For a long time, in my opinion, the Indexing Service can't search Adobe Acrobat PDF files without payment to Adobe Corporation. In the last two posts about Indexing service, I take a long way to introduce how to use Indexing, and I think it is very useful. If you have any problem about that, please feel free contact me.

 

Once I attended a live meeting, the driver of the meeting told me I can search PDF files using the IFilter. Thanks to him.

 

Adobe® PDF IFilter is designed for technically savvy users or administrators who wish to index Adobe PDF documents with Microsoft indexing clients. This allows the user to easily search for text within Adobe PDF documents.

 

The most exciting one is it’s free, and can integrate with operating systems indexing service seamlessly. If you have installed it, you can search PDF Files. You can get the IFilter from the official website of Adobe corporation.

 

Known Issues:

1.        In some cases, when embedded fonts are used in a PDF file, words that are viewable in Acrobat cannot be searched using Index Services.

2.        PDF iFilter will not extract text from PDF files which are password protected.  Password-protected PDF files will not appear on an "unfiltered files" list.

3.        PDF iFilter will not extract text from PDF files which have protection against copying.  This protection is set when the PDF file has Acrobat Standard Security and "No Content Copying or Extraction…..” selected.

4.        The Highlight Hits feature in Microsoft Index Services cannot highlight text in a PDF file opened in Acrobat.

5.        The iFilter specification does not provide any way to return information about how to highlight text in an external application. It only provides the means to extract text from a file of a given type. As a workaround, use the Search feature in Acrobat or Reader to find a specific text strings in a PDF file.

6.        The PDF iFilter DLL is not reentrant (i.e., you cannot run multiple copies of it at the same time).