Microsoft Office Document Imaging Files

[Hrothgar]

I guess .MDI is M$ answer to the PDF.  Do they have a free reader out there?  Does anyone use that format?  It's kind of handy for archiving web pages and stuff, but less so if no one uses it.

Any thoughts?

[stiffler]

I believe that the Microsoft Reader is what you need.  The link is in the text above.  The download link is on the left.  Hope that is it.

[dangerballs]

Microsoft Reader only opens the Microsoft eBook format.  According to the help website:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP062193601033.aspx

.Mdi files can only be opening in Office Imaging.

[stiffler]

Thanks, dangerballs.  I guess my search wasn't thorough enough!  Turns out I have that installed as a part of Office 2002.  Too bad I wasn't the one looking trying to open the file.  :lol:

Good luck, Hrothgar!

[dangerballs]

Thanks, dangerballs.  I guess my search wasn't thorough enough!  Turns out I have that installed as a part of Office 2002.  Too bad I wasn't the one looking trying to open the file.  :lol:

Good luck, Hrothgar!

Good luck indeed.  Proprietary formats are one of my pet peeves.  Why can't we all just use the same formats?

[Hrothgar]

I'm sorry I wasn't clear.  I have office and the MDI tool.  I can create MDI files.  I was curious if anyone could read them.   I mean if I put a PDF up on the web, I'm pretty sure most anyone can read it.    It seems like M$ designed the MDI format to compete with PDF, but if they don't put out a free reader, it's pretty useless.

Why would I buy Acrobat if I have office and can just make MDI files.  Well, I would if no one can read MDI files.

The compression seems comparable to PDF.   If I print a forum thread to it, for example, one was about 143k.  However, if no one can use it in that form and I have to convert it to TIF (the only other option in Imaging), it balloons up to 14.5 MB.  That's not web friendly.  Neither is creating proprietary formats.

[dangerballs]

Only people with Office could read .mdi .

I've got a free program somewhere on my harddrive that installs into Office and lets you create .pdf files.  I can look for it and send it to you if you want.

[egrudzin]

Here's a pretty cool PDF program that is free and open source:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
It actually installs a printer into your Printers folder called PDFCreator.  Then you just print to that and it pops up a menu that allows you to save your document or whatever to PDF.  It's not an Office plug-in so it should work for all apps that can print.  I've used it and it works great.