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Defining Custom Properties

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The following data types are for custom properties:

  • String: DBTYPE_LPSTR|DBTYPE_BYREF, DBTYPE_WSTR|DBTYPE_BYREF, DBTYPE_STR|DBTYPE_BYREF
  • Date: VT_FILETIME
  • Number: DBTYPE_I4
  • Yes or No (TRUE or FALSE): DBTYPE_BOOL

Office document properties take the following GUIDs:

  • Custom properties: D5CDD505-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE
  • Properties such as company name: D5CDD502-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE
  • Built-in properties, like DocTitle: F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB91-08002B27B3D9
  • A_HRef (and HTMLHRef): c82bf597-b831-11d0-b733-00aa00a1ebd2\A.HREF
  • Img_Alt: 70eb7a10-55d9-11cf-b75b-00aa0051fe20\IMG.ALT

The following example shows you how to name a custom property for Office by adding a GUID to the Names section of the .idq file:

Custom_Text ( DBTYPE_STR|DBTYPE_BYREF ) = D5CDD505-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE "Custom_Text"

In this example, Custom_Text can be any string. The value of Custom_Text does not have to be the same at the beginning and end of the line. The one at the beginning is the friendly name, and the one at the end (in quotation marks) is the Office property name.

If defining a custom date, you must use the VT_FILETIME data type. For example:

DocDateCompleted( VT_FILETIME,20 ) = D5CDD505-2E9C-101B-9397-08002B2CF9AE "Date completed"

For other Office properties, see the Microsoft Office Software Developer’s Kit (SDK). For properties available with other products, see the documentation for each independent software vendor that supplies an IFilter implementation.