Version 2.0.1 of eDoc Organizer introduced the advanced search feature. Using advanced search in eDoc Organizer you can search for documents based on the content within them. This is especially useful when used in conjunction with the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature of eDoc Organizer. Using OCR eDoc Organizer can read the text on your scanned paper documents and store it along with the the scanned image in the same PDF file. Advanced search can than assist in retrieving these documents based on the OCR data stored within the PDF file.
Advanced Search for eDoc Organizer is powered by Windows Search 4.0. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we work with Windows Search to be able to quickly and efficiently search for documents in the eDoc Organizer storage repository. But Windows Search doesn't know how to read the contents of PDF files. So you have to install what is called a PDF iFilter on your computer. PDF iFilter reads the contents of the PDF files on your computer and provides the details to Windows Search. If this PDF iFilter is not installed correctly on your computer, Windows Search will not provide accurate search results when eDoc Organizer queries it.
Windows Search behaves a little differently on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. In this post I will show you how to check if the PDF iFilter is installed correctly on a 32-bit WIndows XP machine.
Windows XP (32-bit)
Once you install Windows Search 4.0 on your XP computer, you will see a little magnifying glass icon in the notification area of your taskbar. You will also see a "Desktop Search" toolbar on your taskbar.
You can access Windows Search Options by right clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the notification area.
Clicking on the menu item will bring up the Indexing Options dialog.
Indexing Options dialog has an "Advanced" button on it. Clicking the ":Advanced" button will bring up the Advanced Options dialog.
Advanced Options dialog has a "File Types" tab at the top. Clicking on the tab will show how Windows Search handles different file types. Scroll down until you see PDF file type.
Once you select the PDF file the "How should this file be indexed?" should have "Index properties and file content" checked. This ensures that Windows Search has the proper PDF iFIlter installed and is using the data provided by the iFilter to search for PDF files using their contents.