Ifilters, TIFFs, and OCR...or why don't my TIF files show up in search queries?

You know that SharePoint (That's at least MOSS and WSS3) is capable of indexing the contents of Office files because it comes with built in Ifilters for those products. You, like myself, have also read the hype about the fact that SharePoint was also meant, out of the box, to be able to index content of OCR TIFF files.

But, when you add a TIFF to a library, and then search for it, the file doesn't come up in the results unless your query includes something from the file's metadata.

And that is because, despite the Ifilter being built in, it is not turned on. In order to enable the ifilter for OCR to be enabled you must enable it in the registry of the sharepoint server (and likely all servers on the farm). The KB article outlining what to do is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837847. Please note, as I am in the last throes of editing the book I don't have time to try this puppy out. So all I am, at this point, is the messenger girl. But if I get it to work I'll try to squeeze it into chapter 15. If I can't, well, you'll read about here with screenshots and everything.

Meanwhile, feel free to try it out and see if it works for you.