Enabling the inbuilt msg ifilter on sharepoint (even 64bit!)

Posted by: gavinadams | 9 October, 2007

Enabling the inbuilt msg ifilter on sharepoint (even 64bit!)

One of our big decisions on the proposed physical architecture of our sharepoint farms has been can we go 64bit on the index server. For us the ability to index .msg files is crucial and until now I thought I would have to purchase a third party ifilter. The problem being that the third party does not have a 64bit version of their ifilter and initial discussion with the vendor indicated that building a 64bit ifilter would not be easy.

Some recent updates to the technet sharepoint doco were pointed out to me yesterday that listed msg indexing support as being available out of the box.
This is the relevant page:-

File types and IFilter reference (Office SharePoint Server)
URL: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/09357d8e-37b9-4e96-b8fd-f17b990d010a1033.mspx

So this doc basically states that msg filters are inbuilt. So I do a search of some content that is in the body of a .msg file and no results are returned.

Now I’ve been down this path before with the foxit pdf ifilters so I’m pretty sure that it is a problem with missing values in the registry. I also note at the bottom of the above reference page is a link to an article on search onenote 2007 files. This document provides hints as to the missing registry keys.

Install and register the OneNote IFilter (Office SharePoint Server 2007)
URL: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/2e715e42-c09b-4b4f-a082-b19e1cad96031033.mspx

Crank up regedit check that the :-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.msg keys exist.
(They should do, all my installs have this by default)

The following key is the one that is missing.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.msg]
“Extension”=”msg”
“FileTypeBucket”=dword:00000001
“MimeTypes”=”application/msoutlook”

[Edit 08JUL2010 - changed MimeTypes key above as per testing from others. Thanks to devparts comment below]

Now, I have taken a guess on the mimetype for outlook. I can find no mimetypes for .msg files in the registries on my servers and my workstations. A web search yielded 3 possibilities, “application/vnd.ms-outlook”, “application/x-msg” & “application/msoutlook”

So the next thing was to restart the office search service, and iisreset. I think reset all crawled content (purge the index). Then I ran a full crawl.

Fortunately I got lucky on the mimetype and the index successfully crawled the content of the email! Now for the caveats. I’ve only done basic testing. I haven’t checked if the msg ifilter will pull an attachment (eg word doc) and index that as well. Also I haven’t checked this with Microsoft, though I think it is worthy of a bug report (at least in the doco).

Also thanks to Mutaz from MCS for his initial guidance on pointing me in the right direction this.

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Posted in ifilter, Search, sharepoint

Responses

[...] msg iFilter on MOSS 2007. It's just not active be default. Gavin Adams made a brilliant post to point this out and to deliver a solution how to activate it on your MOSS environment.Also, [...]
By: Build-in msg iFilter on MOSS 2007 - SharePoint & Other Stuff on 6 November, 2007
at 5:06 am

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Just an update on this post.
Tom Vandaele has posted on this topic too.
http://trycatch.be/blogs/tom/archive/2007/11/05/build-in-msg-ifilter-on-moss-2007.aspx

Tom thanks for the link to me.

Also Tom has completed some testing of the indexing of attachments and it works!
By: Gavin Adams on 6 November, 2007
at 9:42 am

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[...] that a third-party development is needed to achieve this ability…Then I found Gavin Adams post and Tom Vandaele post that wrote that the ability to deep search within msg files is a MOSS [...]
By: Your wish is my command-line: MOSS Search for emails and attachments context on 16 January, 2008
at 11:34 pm

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Lirliron,
thanks for your post.

I noticed that in your article that you had better sucess with the following setting.

“MimeTypes”=”application/msoutlook”

I’ll do some further testing and check it out.

Thanks,
Gavin
By: Gavin Adams on 17 January, 2008
at 7:57 am

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I can confirm that attachments of type .docx and .xlsx are searched. At my site I am unable to filter .txt and .doc files, however.
By: Wolfgang on 18 January, 2008
at 8:12 pm

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[...] müssen in der Registrierdatenbank diese beiden Einträge gemacht werden (thanks to Gavin Adams Blog-entry for the info about the Outlook mime types): Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [...]
By: SharePoint Services 3.0 und die Indizierung von MSG-Dateien - odi's blog on 24 January, 2008
at 8:59 pm

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[...] but it is a risky thing to do and does not work properly.The 3 blogs I have found are as follows :Gavin AdamsTom VandaaleLirlironIf you follow their advise you will firstly be taking a risk by altering your [...]
By: Office Server 2007 Ramblings : Search & Indexing - .MSG Outlook messages & Attachments on 25 January, 2008
at 3:36 am

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hi there,

it works for me when i do a file share crawl, but not when i use a custom protocol handler. any thoughts?

cheers,
cipri
By: Cipri on 9 February, 2008
at 9:46 pm

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Sorry Cipri I don’t have any experience with using custom protocol handlers.
By: gavinadams on 11 February, 2008
at 10:22 pm

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Just as Wolfang is unable to search for txt files, I have the same problem, I can search for PDF, DWG, etc but not the most simple file of all … txt
very odd, any ideas?
By: Angelo on 19 April, 2008
at 6:45 am

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Hi Angelo,
I just checked my install. It’s 32bit out of the box with SP1 installed.

I added a txt file and did a full crawl and I was able to search for content in the txt file correctly.

Not sure what it going on with your install. Check that the .txt extension exists in the 2 registry paths that I mention in the article above. Also check that you can do a full crawl and that there are no relevant errors in the crawl log.
By: gavinadams on 19 April, 2008
at 8:09 am

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Gavin

I too am able to search for text files, the only problem is when there is a text file attached to a message and I search for that text inside the message, I cannot search it.
( I do have msgIFIlter)
I can search inside a message in any other file extension but text.
So basically the problem is to search in a message that has a text file attached to it.

Any ideas?
By: Angelo on 22 April, 2008
at 12:47 am

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Gavin, Any help is greatly appreciated.

I created a site custom column and mapped to metadata property. Uploaded a text file, plain simple .txt file and give value for custom metadata property and did full crawl. When I search (from with the portal using basic search screen,) the .txt file is showing in results.

The problem is, When I search the same custom metadata property using API with FullTextQuery and SQL, the query is returning all Office documents like .Doc, .ppt, .xsl files but not the text file.

Any advice.
By: Nick on 24 June, 2008
at 8:55 am

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Hi Gavin,
I have wss 3.0 , ihave checked according to your post but didnt find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.msg keys
is there any way to add them manualy ? if the answer is yes what will be the values ?

Best Regards,
Kobi
By: Kobi Keren on 1 July, 2008
at 12:44 am

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What is the CLSID you have associated with the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.msg
By: Marc on 5 February, 2009
at 7:22 pm

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I have to write a iFIlter for .eml files

How can i startup
By: Prashanthspark on 25 February, 2009
at 10:10 pm

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Veru useful, we are grappling with email for a MOSS Records Center
By: decatec on 5 March, 2009
at 2:51 am

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[...] Thanks to Gavin Adams for the information http://blog.gavin-adams.com/2007/10/09/enabling-the-inbuilt-msg-ifilter-on-sharepoint-even-64bit/ [...]
By: SharePoint Search – Not returning results for Email messages (.msg) - stop collaborate and listen - SharePoint Blogs / SharePoint University on 31 July, 2009
at 10:28 pm

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Hi Gavin,

Thanks for the post it was really handy.
With this post and the Foxit PDF iFilter we are able to index MSG files including attachments on our portal.

However we have found that not all MSG-Attachments are indexed. We got the same e-mail from two different sources, one gets indexed the other doesn’t. We have found the difference laying in some MAPI Properties of the attachment. Unfortunately we cannot figure out which one is causing the problem.

Anyone got any idea, which MAPI Property is the most likely to be needed by the SharePoint crawler?

Thanks
Rosa
By: Rosa on 16 September, 2009
at 12:04 am

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[...] that a third-party development is needed to achieve this ability…Then I found Gavin Adams post and Tom Vandaele post that wrote that the ability to deep search within msg files is a MOSS [...]
By: DevParts Team | MOSS Search for emails and attachments context on 2 July, 2010
at 8:00 pm

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Excellent Post.

Thanks for this great help.

Really appreciative.
By: Sharepoint Recovery on 1 November, 2010
at 4:49 pm

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[...] Enabling the Inbuild MSG iFilter on SharePoint to turn on reading [...]
By: MOSS 2007: Improving Search Relevance Simplified « Steve Hose's Blog on 16 November, 2010
at 2:17 pm

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This can be a really very good go through for me, Must admit that you just are 1 of the best bloggers I ever saw.Thanks for posting this informative write-up.
By: Azzie Srnsky on 24 February, 2011
at 11:49 pm

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Thanks for the article – exacly what I was looking for.
One thing I’m not clear on – in what format the extra keys/values need to be added to the Registry. Could you please clarify?

“Extension”=”msg”
“FileTypeBucket”=dword:00000001
“MimeTypes”=”application/msoutlook”

Are these keys under .msg key, or are these String, DWord values?
By: asembler on 23 August, 2011
at 3:12 pm

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Actually found the answer to my question in another blog:

Add the following key values under .msg key

Name Type value
Extension String msg
FileTypeBucket DWORD 1
MimeTypes String application/vnd.ms-outlook
By: asembler on 23 August, 2011
at 3:17 pm

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I was about to throw the same question as Asembler’s, until I saw he found the answer. Thanks Asembler.

And to Gavin, it’s an excellent post. Something that I have been trying to work on myself for quite a while. Thanks.
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