An IFilter is a
plugin that allows Microsoft's search engines to index various
file format
A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...
s (as documents, email attachments, database records, audio metadata etc.) so that they become searchable. Without an appropriate IFilter, contents of a file cannot be parsed and indexed by the search engine.
They can be obtained as standalone packages or bundled with certain software such as
Adobe Reader
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and web services developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
The family comprises Acrobat Reader (formerly Reader), Acrobat (former ...
,
[Adobe provides only the 32-bit IFilter bundled with its Reader software. To install the 64-bit version, there is a standalone package a]
Acrobat for Windows Downloads Page
LibreOffice
LibreOffice () is a free and open-source office productivity software suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It was created in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice.org, itself a successor to StarOffice. The suite includes applications ...
,
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...
[
Microsoft provides its Office IFilters bundled and available as standalone packages a]
Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs
an
2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack
and
OpenOffice OpenOffice or open office may refer to:
Computing Software
* OpenOffice.org (OOo), a discontinued open-source office software suite, originally based on StarOffice
* Apache OpenOffice (AOO), a derivative of OOo by the Apache Software Foundation, ...
.
It also refers to the software interface needed to implement such plugins.
How it works
An IFilter acts as a plug-in for extracting full-text and metadata for search engines. A search engine usually works in two steps:
Windows Search Service documentation on MSDN
/ref>
# The search engine goes through a designated place, e.g. a file folder or a database, and indexes all documents or newly modified documents, including the various types documents, in the background and creates internal data to store indexing result.
# A user specifies some keywords they would like to search for, and the search engine answers the query immediately by looking up the indexing result and responding to the user with all the documents that contains the keywords.
During Step 1, the search engine itself doesn't understand format of a document. Therefore, it looks on Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
registry for an appropriate IFilter to extract the data from the document format, filtering out embedded formatting and any other non-textual data.
Search engines
Windows Indexing Service and the newer Windows Search
Windows Search (formerly MSN Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, and the Windows Search Engine) is a content index and desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for the previous Indexing Service of Wind ...
, Windows Desktop Search
Windows Search (formerly MSN Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, and the Windows Search Engine) is a content index and desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for the previous Indexing Service of Wind ...
, MSN Desktop Search, Internet Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Site Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology support indexing technology. Also, IFilters are used by SQL Server as a component of the SQL Server Full Text Search service.
See also
* IUnknown In the computer programming of applications on Microsoft_Windows through the Windows_API, the IUnknown interface (computer science), interface is the fundamental interface (computing), interface Component Object Model (COM). The COM specification ma ...
Notes
References
:*
External links
Filter Central
— Microsoft Search Filters Discussion Board;
IFilter.org
— Downloads and documentation;
MSG IFilter
— IFilter for Outlook
Outlook or The Outlook may refer to:
Computing
* Microsoft Outlook, also referred to as ''the classic Outlook'' an e-mail client and personal information management software product from Microsoft
* Outlook for Windows, also referred to as ''the ...
Message Files (.MSG) for Windows Desktop Search
Windows Search (formerly MSN Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, and the Windows Search Engine) is a content index and desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for the previous Indexing Service of Wind ...
;
IFilterShop
— Some IFilters available as free for non-commercial users.
PDF iFilter Win x64 11.0.01
— Adobe PDF iFilter for 64bit Windows systems. Reader and Acrobat include iFilter for 32bit Windows systems.
PDF IFilter
— Foxit PDF IFilter. Works on Windows OS.
PDFlib TET PDF IFilter
— PDF IFilter from PDFlib. Works on Windows OS.
— iFilter Downloads.
— Windows Search connector for IBM Lotus Notes.
Various IFilters.
{{Windows Components
Windows components
Microsoft application programming interfaces
Microsoft software