Released: Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs

by Bharat Suneja

Microsoft has just released Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs. Filter Packs contain IFilters used by search search services such as Windows Search on Windows servers to index a particular file type. The Office 2010 Filter Pack contains the following IFilters:

  • Legacy Office Filter (Office 97-2003: Word .doc, PowerPoint .ppt, Excel .xls)
  • Metro Office Filter (Office 2010/2007:Word .docx, PowerPoint .pptx, Excel .xlsx)
  • OneNote filter
  • Publisher Filter
  • Visio Filter
  • Open Document Format (ODF) Filter
  • Zip Filter

In Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007, Exchange Search uses Windows Search to index messages and supported attachments. Installation of 2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack is a pre-requisite for Exchange 2010 setup, and after setup completes you must register the filters with Exchange Search. Register Filter Pack IFilters with Exchange 2010 includes more information and a PowerShell script to register the IFilters. The Exchange 2007 version is KB 944516 – How to register Filter Pack IFilters with Exchange Server 2007, and contains a VBScript script, but essentially performs the same procedure.

You can install the Office 2010 IFilter Pack on Exchange 2010 RTM/Exchange 2007 servers and use the same scripts to register them.

Does installing or updating an IFilter require reindexing of mailbox databases?

Updating the filter pack does not require a recrawl of mailbox databases on Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2007. You do not need to reset the search index after updating search filters.

When Exchange Search comes across a file format it doesn’t have a search filter for, it marks the document as failed, and the failure code FILTER_NOT_FOUND. On Exchange 2010 Mailbox servers, when you later install a filter for the file format, instead of having to crawl all mailbox databases agian, Exchange Search simply refers to the list of failed documents with the FILTER_NOT_FOUND error code, and only indexes documents for the file format that corresponds to the new search filter you just installed.

On Exchange 2007 Mailbox servers, if you install a new filter for a file format for which no filter was installed on that server, you will need to reset the search index to recrawl the mailbox databases. This can be done using the ResetSearchIndex.ps1 script found in the \Scripts folder.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Amy June 6, 2010 at 3:46 am

[…] 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 […]

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