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Register Filter Pack IFilters with Exchange 2013

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Applies to: Exchange Server 2013

Transport rules with attachment scanning conditions perform text extraction when analyzing the content of attachments. Exchange 2013 can scan most commonly used attachment types natively. More attachment types can be included by registering IFilters with Exchange 2013. This article shows you how to register IFilters released by Microsoft and external providers.

After you register an IFilter for a specific file type, transport rules with attachment processing conditions can scan these attachments. As a result, these file types no longer trigger the AttachmentIsUnsupported condition.

Warning

The procedures listed in this topic involve modifying the registry on your Exchange servers. Incorrectly editing the registry can cause serious problems that might require you to reinstall your operating system. Problems resulting from editing the registry incorrectly might not be able to be resolved. Before editing the registry, back up any valuable data.

These procedures also require you to stop and restart the Microsoft Exchange Transport service on your Mailbox servers.

For more management tasks related to Transport rules, see Manage transport rules in Exchange 2013.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete each procedure: 5 minutes per server.

  • You must be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Exchange server configuration settings" entry in the Exchange and Shell infrastructure permissions article.

  • You must do the following procedures on servers that already have Exchange 2013 Mailbox server role installed. If you add more Mailbox servers after you perform these procedures, you must perform them again on the newly provisioned servers.

  • For information about keyboard shortcuts that might apply to the procedures in this article, see Keyboard shortcuts in the Exchange admin center.

Tip

Having problems? Ask for help in the Exchange forums. Visit the forums at Exchange Server.

Register the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack

By default, Exchange transport rules don't support the following Office file types:

  • Office OneNote
  • Office Publisher

To support these files, you must deploy the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack. This Filter Pack isn't deployed during Exchange 2013 Setup and isn't a prerequisite for deployment.

Deploy the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack

Deploying the Office 2010 Filter Pack consists of two main steps:

  • Download and install the Filter Pack, which registers the IFilters with Windows (Search).

  • Modifying the registry so the IFilters are also registered with Exchange 2013. This step allows Exchange to support attachment scanning for the file formats.

Important

You must perform this procedure on all Mailbox servers in your organization.

  1. Download and save the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack (FilterPack64bit.exe) from the Microsoft Download Center.

  2. Run the FilterPack64bit.exe file on your Mailbox server and follow the instructions to complete the installation.

  3. Start Registry Editor and locate the following registry subkey:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v15\HubTransportRole\CLSID

  4. Under CLSID, add a subkey for OneNote files as follows:

    1. Right-click CLSID, point to New, and then select Key.

    2. Change the name of the new key to {B8D12492-CE0F-40AD-83EA-099A03D493F1}.

    3. Select the key you created and set the (Default) value to where you installed the Office 2010 Filter Pack. By default, the filter pack gets installed at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Filters\ONIFilter.dll.

    4. Right select {B8D12492-CE0F-40AD-83EA-099A03D493F1}, point to New, and then select String Value.

    5. Name the new string value ThreadingModel and set it to Both.

  5. Under CLSID, add a subkey for Publisher files as follows:

    1. Right-click CLSID, point to New, and then select Key.

    2. Change the name of the new key to {A7FD8AC9-7ABF-46FC-B70B-6A5E5EC9859A}.

    3. Select the key you created and set the (Default) value to where you installed the Office 2010 Filter Pack. By default, the filter pack gets installed at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Filters\PUBFILT.dll.

    4. Right-click {A7FD8AC9-7ABF-46FC-B70B-6A5E5EC9859A}, point to New, and then select String Value.

    5. Name the new string value ThreadingModel and set it to Both.

  6. Locate the following registry key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v15\HubTransportRole\filters

  7. Under filters, add a subkey for .one extensions as follows.

    1. Right-click filters, point to New, and then select Key.

    2. Change the name of the new key to .one.

    3. Select the key you created and set the (Default) value to {B8D12492-CE0F-40AD-83EA-099A03D493F1}.

  8. Under filters, add a subkey for .pub extensions as follows:

    1. Right-click filters, point to New and then select Key.

    2. Change the name of the new key to .pub.

    3. Select the key you created and set the (Default) value to {A7FD8AC9-7ABF-46FC-B70B-6A5E5EC9859A}.

  9. Close Registry Editor.

  10. On your Mailbox server, stop and then restart the following services in the specified order:

    1. Stop the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

    2. Stop the Microsoft Filtering Management Service.

    3. Start the Microsoft Filtering Management Service.

    4. Start the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

How do you know you successfully deployed the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack?

To verify that you successfully registered the Microsoft Office 2010 Filter Pack IFilters, do the following steps:

  1. Create a transport rule with the following properties. For detailed instructions about how to create Transport rules, see Manage transport rules in Exchange 2013.

    • The sender is your mailbox.
    • Any attachment's content includes "Testing IFilters".
    • Generate an incident report and send it to your mailbox.

  2. Create a OneNote file that contains the phrase "Testing IFilters", attach it to a new email message, and send it to yourself.

  3. Verify that you receive a Transport rule incident report for the rule you created. This step confirms that the rules engine was able to analyze the contents of the OneNote file.

  4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 with a Publisher file.

Register third-party IFilters to support other file formats

You can extend the attachment scanning capability for other file types by registering other third-party IFilters. You need to install and register the file type's IFilter on each of your Mailbox servers.

Important

Microsoft hasn't tested third-party IFilters with transport rules, therefore we recommend that you deploy and test any third-party IFilters in a test environment before deploying into your production environment.

Deploy the Adobe PDF IFilter

This procedure shows how to deploy the Adobe PDF IFilter to support processing of PDF attachments in transport rules.

Note

By default, Exchange 2013 supports the scanning of PDF files in transport rules. The PDF example here is used simply to illustrate how you can extend support for other file types using third-party IFilters.

  1. Download the Adobe PDF IFilter and then follow the installation instructions.

  2. Start Registry Editor and locate the following subkey:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v15\HubTransportRole\CLSID

  3. Under CLSID, add a subkey for PDF files as follows:

    1. Right-click CLSID, point to New, and then select Key.

    2. Change the name of the new key to {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}.

      Note

      Each IFilter has a unique class ID (CLSID). You can find the CLSID in the installation documentation for the IFilter you're registering or by searching for the file extension under the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID key in the registry.

    3. Select the key you created and set the (Default) value to where you installed the PDF IFilter. By default, the PDF IFilter is installed at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe PDF IFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms\bin\PDFFilter.dll.

  4. Locate the following registry key:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v15\HubTransportRole\filters

  5. Under filters, add a subkey for .pdf extensions as follows:

    1. Right-click filters, point to New, and then select Key.

    2. Change the name of the new key to .pdf.

    3. Select the key you created and set the (Default) value to {E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}.

  6. Close Registry Editor.

  7. On your Mailbox server, stop and restart the following services in the specified order:

    1. Stop the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

    2. Stop the Microsoft Filtering Management Service.

    3. Start the Microsoft Filtering Management Service.

    4. Start the Microsoft Exchange Transport service.

How do you know that you successfully registered third-party IFilters to support other file formats?

Use the same procedure described earlier in this article: How do you know that you successfully registered third-party IFilters to support other file formats?. Substitute Publisher files with Adobe PDF files.

For more information

Use transport rules to inspect message attachments.

Mail flow or transport rules.

Transport rule conditions (predicates).

Transport rule actions.