IFilter replacement

Question

I'm currently using IFilters to extract text from various file (word, excel, tiff, pdf etc). I understand that IFilters have been discontinued with Windows 8. Does anyone have any recommendations on how to extract text without the native apps being installed? If it's any use I'm using C# and .Net 4

Answer 1

IFilter is not discontinued. Only the Windows Indexing Service is discontinued in favor of Windows Search or Microsoft Search Server. Both continue to use IFilters.

According to this documentation, the main point of compatibility for IFilters going forward are that they support the IPersistStream interface. All modern implementations should avoid requiring IPersistStorage, so they don't have to access the disk themselves.

Answer 2

You could follow Microsoft's recommendations?

From Indexing Service Implementations of IFilter:

Indexing Service is no longer supported as of Windows XP and is unavailable for use as of Windows 8. Instead, use Windows Search for client side search and Microsoft Search Server Express for server side search.

Also, see Developing Filter Handlers for Windows Search...