Supported document formats

The text column data can be plain text, an HTML document, an XML document, or any document that is recognized by the search engine.

A text search server parses documents to extract the relevant parts and make those parts searchable. For example, tags and metadata in an HTML document are not indexed. Parsing of the following document formats is supported:

  • TEXT: Flat text
  • HTML: Hypertext Markup Language
  • XML: Extensible Markup Language
  • INSO: The search engine uses filters to detect the format of text documents. The following table lists the file types that are supported.
Table 1. Supported document types
Document types Typical file extensions
Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus 1-2-3 for SmartSuite® 123
Microsoft Word 97 and later DOC
Hypertext Markup Language HTML
JustSystems Ichitaro JTD, JTT, JFW, JVW
Lotus Word Pro® LWP
Microsoft Project MPP
Portable Document Format PDF
Microsoft PowerPoint PPT
Lotus Freelance PRZ
Quattro Pro QPW
Microsoft Rich Text Format RTF
StarOffice Calc and OpenOffice Calc SXC
StarOffice Impress and OpenOffice Impress SXI
StarOffice Writer and OpenOffice Writer SXW
Microsoft WordPad (File types can vary.) TXT
Microsoft Visio VSD
Microsoft Write WRI
WordStar and WordStar 2000 WS
Microsoft Excel XLS

All of the documents in an indexed text column must be of the same format (TEXT, HTML, XML or INSO).

XML data

XML structure in the XML data is indexed in the text search server after parsing the data through an XML parser. Then, you can use the supported XPath query syntax to retrieve the results.