Laserfiche Volume Structure and File Types

Windows File System Structure

Each document page or electronic file has a unique repository ID. The Windows file path for each document page or electronic file is determined by the hexadecimal representation of that ID. Convert this ID value to the 8-character hexadecimal version (e.g. AABBCCDD) and split the path into two-character parts to get the paths. For a document page with ID AABBCCDD, the paths would be \AA\BB\CC\AABBCCDD.tif and \AA\BB\CC\AABBCCDD.txt for the page’s image and text pages respectively. To get the path for the electronic file of a document, add an “e” to the part of the path. If we consider instead a document with ID AABBCCDD, the path for its electronic file will be \eAA\BB\CC\AABBCCDD .

Consider an imaged document that contains a page with page ID 123456. This converts into a hex value of 0001E240. The page’s TIFF image file path will be \00\01\E2\0001E240.tif.

If instead 123456 was the ID of an electronic document, the path to the electronic file of that document would be \e00\01\E2\0001E240. The file will not have a file extension.

File Types in a Laserfiche Volume

  • Electronic files: Electronic files are stored in the file format in which they were imported into the repository. For instance, if you import a Microsoft Excel file, the volume will store it as a Microsoft Excel file.
  • .TIF files (images): If a document has been imaged by a Laserfiche application, an image file exists for each page in a document that contains an image. They are stored in TIFF format. Group IV compression is used for black-and-white images, while JPEG compression is used for grayscale and color images.
  • .TXT files (text): A text file exists for each page in a document that contains text. Laserfiche creates Unicode (UTF-16 with no BOM header) text files.
  • .LOC files (word location information): A LOC file contains information linking OCRed text to its corresponding location on an image. Word location data make it possible for the Laserfiche Client to display search result context lines.
  • .LFT files (thumbnails): A file that contains thumbnail information for an image. The LFT file for an image is generated the first time that image is opened.