Index Microsoft Office Files for Windows Search on Server 2012

After setting up Server 2012 Essentials, I discovered that the native Windows Search indexes .doc, .docx, .ppt, and .xls files, but not .pptx or .xlsx files.Manually adding Office extensions would treat them as text files, i.e. it would not handle file formats intelligently. For example, I believe it would index the XML tags as well as the content of .xlsx and .pptx files.

Fortunately, I found the following available for download:

Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Packs

Although it does not list Windows 2012 as a supported operating system, I installed it anyway. It added the .xslx and .pptx extensions. After indexing completed and a server reboot, a quick test shows that it is now able to find an .xlsx file that it was missing before.

Update December 5, 2012

Microsoft Partner Support pointed out that Service Pack 1 is available for the Office 2010 Filter Pack:  KB2460041. It was a snap to install this from Windows Update.

Support also indicated that there may be an Office 2013 Filter Pack, though the release date is uncertain. There is actually a Filter Central blog, but the last update was two years ago.

Update October 23, 2016

It seems the 2010 filter pack is still needed by Server 2016—it doesn’t index pptx or xlsx otherwise.

Service pack 2 was made available on July 9, 2013:  KB2687447. Windows 2016 did not show this as an available update, but the article includes download links.

There have been several updates to Filter Pack 2.0 since then:

  • March 11, 2014:  KB2837594
  • May 13, 2014:  KB2878281 (Could not find this one online on October 17, 2019)
  • February 9, 2016:  KB2999508

Update October 17, 2019

After installing SP2 and all three updates, the Uninstall an update option in Server 2016 only shows SP2 and KB2999508. So apparently the updates after the service pack are cumulative.

Update August 31, 2023

On a new Server 2022, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .xls, and .pdf are automatically indexed. Oddly, .pptx and .xlsx are not indexed until you add the Filter Pack. Here you can see the differences on the xls and related file extensions:

Windows Search 1

Windows Search 2

1 thought on “Index Microsoft Office Files for Windows Search on Server 2012

  1. Pingback: Server 2012 R2 Post-Upgrade Tasks | MCB Systems

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