title: Using full-text search with PDF files in SQL Server 2008
body: <p>I have SQL Server 2008 R2 and am trying to implement full-text search on a PDF BLOB.</p>
  
  <p>I have installed the iFilter from Adobe and confirmed it is installed</p>
  
  <p>Using </p>
  
  <pre><code>EXEC sp_help_fulltext_system_components 'filter';
  </code></pre>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>filter    .pdf    E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603<br>
    C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe PDF iFilter 11 for 64-bit platforms\bin\PDFFilter.dll<br>
    11.0.1.36 Adobe Systems, Inc.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I then created a fulltext catalog for the FT Index and created the FT index</p>
  
  <pre><code>CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX ON Compliance_Updates
  ( 
  FileDesc
   Language 1033,
   FileData
     TYPE COLUMN FileDataType
  ) 
   KEY INDEX PK_Compliance_Updates
       ON FT_Compliance_Updates; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I then forced a rebuild of the index after adding some PDF's to the table. The index shows..</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Catalogue Size : 0MB<br>
    Item Count : 2<br>
    Unique Key Count : 7<br>
    Name : FT_Compliance_Updates<br>
    Last Population Date : 12/11/2013 09:36<br>
    Population Status : Idle  </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>However, when I perform the following search, I get zero results...</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT FileID, FileDesc, PubDate 
  FROM Compliance_Updates 
  WHERE CONTAINS(FileData, 'mortgage')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I've tried deleting the catalog, removing all the table records and indexes (including PK), re-running the iFilter install </p>
  
  <pre><code>exec sp_fulltext_service 'load_os_resources', 1;
  exec sp_fulltext_service 'verify_signature', 0;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Restarting SQL Server, re-creating the indexes and FT catalog, nothing seems to work?</p>