Indexing and Searching PDF Content in WSS 3.0

Starting in V8, the PDF iFilter file is bundled with Adobe Reader. To get the iFilter, you need to install Adobe Reader (8.0 or higher) onto the WSS server that will be doing the indexing.

The procedure below wouldn’t work for 64 bit servers. You can find comments on this in http://workerthread.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/adobe-reader-9-available-works-fine-with-sharepoint/ WSS needs to know what extension to use, so you need to change a few registry entries.

In regedit:

1. 
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\{ANYGUID}\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList
   
   Find the highest number in the list and add the next value with PDF for the value.
   
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension
   
   This is the list of file extensions with a class ID for the iFilter used to index the extension. If .pdf is not listed, add it. It should have a multistring value in which you need to add the CLSID for the iFilter added by Adobe Reader. For version 9 this file is called "AcroRDIF.dll." You can look up its CLSID by doing a Find under the CLSID key (under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\).
   
   CLSID for 9 = {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}.
   
3. Add its path to the environment variables of the server:
   Start Menu /right click My Computer / select Properties /go to the Advanced tab /click on the Environmental Variables button and scroll down the Path variable, select it and click on the Edit button and add the path ";C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader" then click OK to apply and close.
   
4. Reboot the server. It may take some time until the PDF documents are indexed.
   
   You can also run the search service.  Use run via stsadm -o spsearch... for WSS and SSP Full Crawl for MOSS.