Windows Desktop Search (WDS) - searching PDF files

[Guest]

I have XP SP2 with updates turned on, Windows Desktop Search 2.6.6 and Adobe
Acrobat Reader 8.1.1 on a standard Dell notebook computer. WDS, however,
doesn't appear to be searching for text within PDF files. I can go into the
Adobe Reader and tell it to search for text in other PDF files which it then
will report, so I know it is there. How can I get WDS to report this
information? I looked at the add-ins for 2.6.6, and if I'm reading the
following link correctly this functionality would seem to come built-in with
Adobe Reader 8.0+:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pr...choose/windowsdesktopsearch/266/overview.mspx

Any ideas on how to get this to work would be appreciated. If installing WDS
3.01 would solve it I can do that since I meet the system requirements, but
my concern is I might run into the same issue.

Thank you for your time and attention.
- Bob

 

[Tom Porterfield]

I have XP SP2 with updates turned on, Windows Desktop Search 2.6.6 and Adobe
Acrobat Reader 8.1.1 on a standard Dell notebook computer. WDS, however,
doesn't appear to be searching for text within PDF files. I can go into the
Adobe Reader and tell it to search for text in other PDF files which it then
will report, so I know it is there. How can I get WDS to report this
information? I looked at the add-ins for 2.6.6, and if I'm reading the
following link correctly this functionality would seem to come built-in with
Adobe Reader 8.0+:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pr...choose/windowsdesktopsearch/266/overview.mspx

Any ideas on how to get this to work would be appreciated. If installing WDS
3.01 would solve it I can do that since I meet the system requirements, but
my concern is I might run into the same issue.

Adobe 8.1.1 includes the appropriate IFilter to allow WDS to search PDF
files. I am now running WDK 3.01 so don't know if this is different in
2.6.6, but you do need to configure WDS to search inside PDF files. Go
to Options in WDS, Advanced Options and choose File Types. Go to the
PDF extension in the list and make sure there is a checkmark next to it
and that it is using the PDF Filter.

 

[Guest]

with 2.6.6 under options/advanced options there is a box labeled "Index file
types as text." I added .pdf to the list. I assume I now need to give it some
time to index these. Will report back how it went. Thank you for the info.

 

[Guest]

After adding the ".pdf" to the list in 2.6.6 and giving it a couple of hours
to update, it still did not seem to be picking up anything, but that may have
been due to an oversight on my part which I came across later. So I then
installed 3.01 to try that and saw where it included .pdf as the default. It
was starting to work but only a limited number of files were being indexed -
a different problem. I eventually discovered that I had to turn on the "Allow
fast indexing" for the folder properties so those folders would then get
indexed. Once that was done it worked great. So the "allow fast indexing"
property setting may have been complicating my situation with 2.6.6, and if I
had had that turned on then it too may have been working. Thank you.