One of the prerequisites for both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 is to install the “filter packs”. The filter packs are responsible for “filtering” the content of Microsoft Office documents and passing those contents back to the Indexing Service (ok, it’s not called the Indexing Service anymore – it’s Microsoft Search – and Exchange 2010 uses a slightly customized version of Microsoft Search called “Microsoft Search (Exchange)”).
In Exchange 2003 and before, creating a full-text search index was optional – and “expensive”. Beginning with Exchange 2007, it became cheap (due to Exchange’s use of the much improved Microsoft Search engine) and required. All Outlook Web App (Outlook Web Access) searches and all Outlook (online) searches use that index.
So, with the release of Office 2010, Microsoft has also released an update to the filter packs that support Office 2010 (plus a few other document types). The new filter packs can be installed on Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 (and it seems likely that they will be required for Exchange 2010 SP1). Filters are built-in for the following formats:
Legacy Office Filter (97-2003; .doc, .ppt, .xls)
Metro Office Filter (2007 and 2010; .docx, .pptx, .xlsx)
Zip Filter
OneNote filter
Visio Filter
Publisher Filter
Open Document Format Filter
You can download the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs here.
However, you may notice that a common file format is missing! PDF. In order to scan and index PDFs, you need to install a filter available from Adobe, the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms. That will work with both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.
Bharat Suneja, an ex-Exchange MVP who is now working for Microsoft, provides additional information about index generation and scanning on his blog Exchangepedia.(He gave you some stuff I didn’t – and I’ve given you some stuff he didn’t. It all works out!) 🙂
Until next time…
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