RE-Indexing the Company Web for Premium Customers

Against the popular believe that Microsoft builds what they want and people just conform, we're actually spending time going through research (most of it in PDF format) and we're sharing amongst each other (which you should just read as SharePoint). Only one problem. SharePoint doesn't have that PDF icon in it, and it doesn't index PDF files for search with the SQL 2000 backend.

Lucky for us, we have a Blithering Lunatic for an MVP! Chad posts on how to add a PDF icon in Companyweb, which essential involves dropping a 16x16 icon into the specific location of c:\program files\ common files\ microsoft shared\ web server extensions\ 60\ template\ images, and dropping that icon in there. Then modifying the c:\program files\ common files\ microsoft shared\ web server extensions\ 60\ template\ xml\ docicon.xml in the "By Extension" section to add the entry.

Next you need the Adobe PDF IFilter to install on your server so the PDFs are searchable.

Now comes the inspiration for this blog post. Dean, my manager, is a smart guy, he'd already copied about 40 PDF files into our SharePoint website, but they weren't getting indexed. Dean decided to do an MSN Search for how to get the indexing to happen. A couple of responses came back involving

1. Removing and copying all the files into the site again -- Painful


2. Running some osql commands -- DOS, ouch!


3. Forgetting about searching those files -- Clearly not an option

So what did Dean do?

Dean actually found the Content Database SharePoint was using by opening up SharePoint Central Administration from the Administration Tools, then going to Configure Virtual Server Settings, Company Web and then Manage Content Databases.

Write down the name of the content database, then
Expand Microsoft SQL Servers, SQL Server Group, {ServerName}\SharePoint and Databases. Pick the name you wrote down above, and then select Full-Text Catalogs. You can right-click on the catalog and choose Rebuild Catalog.

In a somewhat short period of time, all those files will be indexed and you'll be able to search your PDF files.