use the image datatype.

Have a look at

http://www.indexserverfaq.com/blobs.htm for more information on how to do
this.

Bill,
Yes, you can store word, excel, pdf etc documents in order to search them
for specific content (as in Full-text) the contents of the MS Word files
stored in an SQL Table's FT-enable IMAGE column. As you're are using SQL
Sever 2000, you will need to add a "file extension" column to your table and
populate it with the file extension value, for example "doc" or ".doc" for
MS Word documents. Note, this "file extension" column must be defined as
sysname, char(3) or varchar(4) in order for the MSSearch service to
correctly identify the file type to be indexed.

Additionally, below is a SQL script example of using TextCopy.exe (ships
with SQL Server 2000) to import MS Word documents into SQL Sever table and
IMAGE column and then using SQLFTS CONTAINS or FREETEXT to search the
contents of that MS word document:

use pubs
go
if exists (select * from sysobjects where id = object_id('FTSTable'))
 drop table FTSTable
go
CREATE TABLE FTSTable (
 KeyCol int IDENTITY (1,1) NOT NULL
   CONSTRAINT FTSTable_IDX PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,
 TextCol text NULL,
 ImageCol image NULL,
 ExtCol char(3) NULL, -- can be either sysname or char(3)
 TimeStampCol timestamp NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
go
-- Insert data... (Note: Initalizing IMAGE column with 0xFFFFFFFF for use
with TextCopy.exe)
INSERT FTSTable values('Test TEXT Data for row 1', 0xFFFFFFFF, 'doc', NULL)
go
-- Select data
SELECT * from FTSTable
go
declare @query varchar(200)
-- Insert MS_Word_document.doc into Row 5 !!
-- NOTE: Ensure the correct path for textcopy.exe!!
set @query = 'D:\MSSQL80\MSSQL$SQL80\Binn\textcopy /s '+@@servername+' /u sa
/p<password> /d pubs /t FTSTable /c ImageCol /f
D:\SQLFiles\Shiloh\<MS_Word>.doc /i /k 5000 /w "where KeyCol=1"'
print @query
exec master..xp_cmdshell @query
go
-- Select data
SELECT * from FTSTable
go
-- FTI
use pubs
go
exec sp_fulltext_database 'enable' -- only do this once!
go
-- Drop FTI, if necessary...
-- exec sp_fulltext_table 'FTSTable','drop'
-- exec sp_fulltext_Catalog 'FTSCatalog','drop'

exec sp_fulltext_catalog 'FTSCatalog','create'
exec sp_fulltext_table 'FTSTable','create','FTSCatalog','FTSTable_IDX'
exec sp_fulltext_column 'FTSTable','ImageCol','add', 0x0409, 'ExtCol'
exec sp_fulltext_column 'FTSTable','TextCol','add'
exec sp_fulltext_table 'FTSTable', 'activate'
go
-- Start FT Indexing...
exec sp_fulltext_catalog 'FTSCatalog','start_full'
go
-- Wait for FT Indexing to complete and check NT/Win2K Application log for
success/errors..

-- Search for search_word_here in MS_Word
select KeyCol, ImageCol  from FTSTable where
contains(*,'<search_word_in_MS_Word_here>') order by KeyCol
go
-- Search for search_word_here in MS_Word file...
select KeyCol, ImageCol from FTSTable where
freetext(*,'<search_word_in_MS_Word_here>') order by KeyCol
go

-- Remove FT Indexes & Catalog & table..
exec sp_fulltext_table 'FTSTable','drop'
exec sp_fulltext_Catalog 'FTSCatalog','drop'
drop table FTSTable

Note, that to FT Search the Metadata info contained in the documents, such
as author, title, you wll need to programmaticlly extract this information
and store it in a textual column and then FT Index these columns in addition
to the document column.

Hope that helps!
John