How to: Edit a Thesaurus File

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New: 5 December 2005

The thesaurus files are empty. You must add synonyms for query terms to these files before Full-Text Search queries that look for synonyms can work properly. For more information about modifying a thesaurus file, see Configuring Thesaurus Files.

Important

Entries added to the thesaurus cannot be made up entirely of special characters. Also, thesaurus entries should not be empty and should not be noise words.

Editing a thesaurus file

  1. Open the thesaurus file you want to edit in Microsoft Notepad.

    Note

    If you add double-byte character set (DBCS) characters to the file, you must save the files in Unicode.

  2. If you are editing the thesaurus file for the first time, remove the following comment lines at the beginning and end of the file, respectively:

    <!--Commented out
-->

  3. Add, modify, or delete a replacement set, or expansion set. For more information, see Configuring Thesaurus Files

  4. Save the file and close Notepad.

  5. Restart the MSFTESQL service.

    Note

    If the MSFTESQL service is not restarted, the changes made to the thesaurus files are not picked up.

See Also

Concepts

Thesaurus
Full-Text Search

Other Resources

CONTAINS (Transact-SQL)
FREETEXT (Transact-SQL)
FREETEXTTABLE (Transact-SQL)

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance