We often need to configure Office Server Search while working on MOSS 2007 infrastructure projects. Microsoft Filter Pack is efficient as long as it only comes to indexing the metadata documents or metadata and content of file types.

As a large volume of documentation often exist in PDF format and there is always a requirement to index those .pdf files. As you know for every other file type, a so called iFilter indexing is needed. In case of .pdf files, you need to aquire third party iFilters.

The most common iFilters available for .pdf files are:

Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

Foxit PDF IFilter

PDFlib TET PDF IFilter

Here, most common are Adobe PDF iFilter and Foxit PDF iFilter. While Adobe iFilter is available free of charge, for the other two you will need to pay license fees.

With respect to the performance, these two IFilters differ. Microsoft bloggers have already done various testings on Adobe PDF iFilter and Foxit PDF iFilter. As a result of various testings done by Microsoft bloggers, Foxit iFilter (32 bit) is around 4 times as fast as the Adobe Filter. And Foxit iFilter (64 bit) is about 5 times, as fast as the Adobe Filter.

In addition we found PDFlib TET PDF IFilter, for which there were no performance records found.

This was a enough reason to test all these three iFilters for their performance.

The Test Setup:

All three iFilters were tested on same hardware environment.

We used a virtual Hyper-V with two virtual processors and 4 GB RAM. OS used was Windows Server 2008 (Standard Edition) with Service Pack 1.

MOSS 2007 SP 1 (Cumulative update Feb 2009)

Here we indexed 1022 documents (both German and English) of volume of 1.8GB.

The default settings of the current IFilter were used. The duration of indexing was collected in two runs and considered the best result.

The Test Result:

Sharepoint ifilter comparison

License costs compared

Sharepoint ifilter comparisons

Status: 11.05.2009, all data without guarantee.

Rating:

Alrough the Adobe iFilter comes free, its indexing performance has lot of scope for improvement. While the performance of  iFilter Foxit and PDFlib are at par. Initial review cannot comment on difference in the quality of indexing. You can therefore reduce the decision criteria for an iFilter on other factors like volume, cost and personal preferences.

If a large volume of PDF documents are to be indexed the one of the paid options are recommended.
If the index server is not a dedicated server, then this task is preferably preformed by a Web Frontend Server. Because the indexing requires much CPU time, it should be exploited as efficiently as possible.

In case of multi-core the PDFlib IFilter is more cost effective than other peers.

Resources:

Original blog post

Download:

2007 Office System Converter: Microsoft Filter Pack

Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

Foxit PDF IFilter

PDFlib TET PDF IFilter

Learn:

How to register Microsoft Filter Pack with SharePoint Server 2007 and with Search Server 2008

While doing so I recognized that on my machine the datasheet view doesn’t work. Then I started blaming my IE6 and upgraded to IE7 which didn’t helped and finally I landed up with IE8 which also didn’t worked.

It gives following error.
“The Standard View of your list is being displayed because your browser does not support running ActiveX controls.”

While I tried to search for some solution, I found that lot of people are facing this problem.

There are many solutions that worked for them and there are many of them for who nothing worked actually.

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See Also: MCTS: MOSS 2007 Configuration (70-630) all you need to know to clear this exam

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So I came to a conclusion that there is no perfect solution available.

Here are some possible solutions that work.

All of these are not found by me. I’m just trying to put them at one place.

1.
Microsoft says:
A datasheet component that is compatible with Windows SharePoint Services is not installed.
AND/OR
A Microsoft Office 2003 Professional edition is not installed on the computer.
AND/OR
The Web browser does not support ActiveX controls.
AND/OR
Support for ActiveX controls is disabled

If you are using Office 2003, then try the first solution first. Install Office 2003 web components.

Make sure that you have installed Office 2003 or higher on your client machine.

Unfortunately there are no Office 2007 web components available and I am using Office 2007. Still I tried to install those which didn’t worked too.

I also tried my ActiveX settings for IE8 but that didn’t helped.

As I tried all of them. Still it didn’t worked. Then I carried on my R&D.

2.
On your client machine run, “Microsoft Office Diagnostics”.

This one worked for me. And datasheet view started working normally.

But this too doesn’t work for everyone.

3.
Try putting the site in the trusted sites list. This may solve the problem if it is related to activeX.

4.
Based on my exprience, this kind of problems (a ActiveX component doesn’t work on a particualr client) mostly is caused by a corrupted registry entry or file. So, a complete reinstallation may be the most prompt way to resolve such an issue. While this is not a good advice.

5.
Open the file ows.js in your favorite editor. It can be found here.
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033

Put following javascript code
function RenderActiveX(str)
{

document.write(str);
}

and reset your app pool.

while if the problem is only with a perticular client then I wont suggest this.

6.

If you are working on as WSS 2.0 site then this hotfix might help you.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948919/en-us

This is a post SP3 hotfix.

7.

The Office Service Pack team has announced that Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System due to ship April 28th. This is a good news and we hope they solve this problem for all users.

Even I found some people who has tried all of these and still the datasheet view doesn’t work for them.

So I said earlier, there isn’t a perfect solution for this.
If you know some more then please comment!

If you found the article useful, please re-tweet it and help others too.

1. Disabling mysite/mylinks on MOSS 2007

Step 1.
Visit “Central Administration”
Select “SharedServices” under “Shared Services Administration”
Step 2:
Under “User Profiles and My Sites”, select “Personalization services permissions”

Step 3:
This will open “Manage Permissions”.

Select appropriate user for which you want to disable “mysite” option.

In most cases you will have to use “NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users”. This will apply to all authenticated users. In my case I was using windows integrated security so I used this one.

Step 4:

Clicking the user will take you to the following screen.

Un-check the “Create personal site” option.

This should work for you. You may additionally un select the “Use personal feature” option as per your needs.

2. Disabling mysite / mylinks on SharePoint 2003 Server

Check following detailed link for 2003 server.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B887921

But again there are 2 types.
1. Turning off My Site personal site and turn off views for members of a site group
2. Turning off My Site personal sites without affecting views for a site group

So first confirm which option you want to go first. Then only make changes.

Enjoy..