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Display iFilter Plugins With SearchFilterView

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:52:16 +0000

The Windows operating system, or more precisely the Windows Indexing Service and Windows Desktop Search, use so called iFilters to not only index the names of files on storage devices but also their contents. Several iFilters come preinstalled with the operating system. Windows 7 for instance supports mime, html, document, plain text and binary handlers by default with the option to install additional iFilters to make the contents of other file types such as Adobe PDF, email or hlp searchable.

SearchFilterView is a new Nirsoft application that can be used to list the installed iFilter plugins of an operating system. The portable software program will display the installed iFilter plugins automatically after startup.

The program lists the iFilter filename, file desciption, file version, product name, company, path, class IDs and registry time in its interface.

The selection of any iFilter in the list displays the registered file extensions that can be searched thanks to the plugin.

The software offers the standard Nirsoft reporting options. It is possible to create html reports from selected or all iFilters and to save selected items to the local computer system.

Another interesting function is the ability to add or remove extensions from installed iFilters. This can be handy for instance if two iFilters support the same file extension.

SearchFilterView is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. This includes support for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program can be downloaded from the Nirsoft website.

Windows IFilter Explorer

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 10:13:08 +0000

IFilters are plugins that are used by various indexing applications like Windows Search, the Windows indexing service, Windows Desktop Search, Exchange Server or SQL Server. An IFilter makes the contents of a filetype indexable and thus searchable. File contents cannot be indexed or searched if no IFilter plugin is available for that specific filetype.

The Windows IFilter Explorer provides an overview of all IFilter plugins that are installed on the Windows operating system. It will display the path and name of the IFilter along with the filetypes that it supports. Various software programs are listed as tabs on the top to switch to the known IFilters of these programs.

It has to be noted that IFilter Explorer has not been updated for about three years which means that some newer applications that make use if IFilters are not in the list. This does not interfere with the data that is displayed in the application window on the other hand. (for example: Windows Search 3.0 is shown in the tabs but not Windows Search 4.0).

The IFilter Explorer can be used to analyze the various IFilter plugins that are installed on the computer system. It can also be used to find filetypes that are not fully indexed by the various applications that support iFilter. The developer of the application is offering several IFilters for download on the website. It does seem that the application is not developed actively anymore.

Microsoft Filter Pack

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:32:44 +0000

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.