The Microsoft Filter Pack adds additional IFilters to the Windows operating system which are used by Windows Search and depending applications to index the contents of document formats. To be precise, the Microsoft Filter pack will register additional IFilters with the Microsoft Windows Indexing Service.
The document formats that get added by the filter pack are .docx, .docm, .pptx, .pptm, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .zip, .one, .vdx, .vsd, .vss, .vst, .vdx, .vsx, and .vtx whcih are basically all the new document formats that have been introduced in Microsoft Office 2007.
An IFilter basically allow the Windows Indexing Service and Windows Desktop Search so that these file formats become searchable in Windows. The Microsoft Filter Pack can be installed on Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista or Windows XP.
The Microsoft page states that the software package has been updated to version 2 on October 9 although the download is still for the Microsoft Filter Pack 1.0.
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Good news. Now searching will make more sense
If only visio ifilter worked…
Visio Search is actually Possible, yet- not Enabled by default.
you should activate it using the Microsft’s Instructions Placed at the bottom of the MS’s Download Page. There are instructions about enabling office-search-server to search through all sort of files, the v** are to be enabled using a small & easy registry edit (adding 1-2 keys with a long “{.some long number….}” in it, the index service should include the office v** files next time the cache index will be refreshed, (can be done manually).
hope that helps.. :)
Elad Karako
.net Developer