How to open mdi file

Chief Technology Writer

Someone sent you by e-mail MDI file and you don't know how to open it? Maybe you have found a MDI file on your computer and wondering what it's for? Windows might tell you that you can't open it, or in the worst case scenario, you might encounter an MDI file related error message.

Before you can open an MDI file, you'll need to figure out what kind of file the MDI file extension belongs to.

Tip: Incorrect MDI file association errors can be a symptom of other underlying issues within your Windows operating system... These invalid entries can also produce associated symptoms such as slow Windows startups, computer freezes, and other PC performance issues. Therefore, it highly recommended that you scan your Windows registry for invalid file associations and other issues related to a fragmented registry.

Answer:

MDI files are Page Layout Files primarily associated with Borland Multiple Document Interface (Borland Software Corporation).

MDI files are also associated with MIDI sequention Sound, Office Document Imaging File (Microsoft Corporation), and FileViewPro.

Additional types of files may also be using the MDI file extension. If you are aware of any other file formats that use the MDI file extension, please contact us so we can update our information accordingly.

How to open your MDI file:

The fastest and easy way to open your MDI file is to double-click on it. In this case, Windows itself will choose the necessary program to open your MDI file.

In case your MDI file won't open, it is very likely that your PC does not have the required application program to view or edit files with MDI extensions.

If your PC opens the MDI file, but it's the wrong application, you'll need to change your Windows registry file association settings. In other words, Windows is associating MDI file extensions with the wrong program.

Install Optional Products - FileViewPro (Solvusoft) | | | |

MDI Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME):

• mime image / vnd.ms-modi

MDI File Analysis Tool ™

Unsure about which type of MDI file you have? Want to get precise information about a file, its creator and how you can open it?

Now you can instantly get all necessary information about the MDI file!

The revolutionary MDI File Analysis Tool ™ scans, analyzes and reports detailed information about the MDI file. Our (patent pending) algorithm will quickly parse the file and, within seconds, provide detailed information in a clear and easy-to-read format. †

Within a few seconds, you will know for sure the type of your MDI file, the application associated with the file, the name of the user who created the file, the file's protection status, and other useful information.

To start free analysis file, just drag and drop your MDI file inside dotted line below or click View My Computer and select a file. The MDI file analysis report will be shown below, right in the browser window.

Drag and drop MDI file here to start analysis

View my computer "

Please also check my file for viruses

Your file is being analyzed ... please wait.

Simple but nice program for viewing files in MDI format. It only allows you to view documents and save individual pages as images.

Screenshot gallery

No matter how much we curse the MicroSoft company, we can't do without it - even Windows itself is its handiwork :). But, in addition to the system itself, the corporation has also created many applications to it, which have become standards and benchmarks in their field.

An example of such a standard can be considered the office software package that has grown to incredible sizes today Microsoft Office... Usually, speaking about the Office, we mean, first of all, its most popular components: text editor Word, Excel spreadsheet and Power Point presentation development system. However, these programs are only a small part of the whole office "colossus".

And today I would like to talk about one component that is not the most popular, but delivers a lot of troubles to users. office suite from MicroSoft - Microsoft Office Document Imaging. This program allows you to work with scanned materials in TIFF and MDI formats. And, if TIFF scans can be opened using third-party viewers and converters, then the MDI format is closed, so there is very little third-party software to at least open it.

MODI for free!

It is worth immediately making a reservation about the original Microsoft package Office Document Imaging. Since MicroSoft removed it from the original Office (since 2010), it has been made available as a component in the free SharePoint Designer 2007 developer kit.

Therefore, if you are not afraid of downloading an almost 300-megabyte installer from which we need to install only one small component, then download SharePoint and during installation select the "Not available" values ​​for all components except MODI.

Are there any alternatives?

Until recently, there was free version the popular MDI viewer MDI2PDF Converter, which allowed you to open files and convert them to a more digestible PDF format. But, all good things tend to end someday, therefore this program became completely paid, leaving only the option of viewing in the free edition.

Therefore, we set ourselves the goal of finding its free analogue, and after a long search, we found a small application called Free MDI Image Viewer in the open spaces of the "bourgeois".

Features of the program

• viewing MDI documents;
• viewing multi-page TIFF(undocumented feature);
• converting MDI to graphic formats JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF and TIF;
• preservation of the OCR layer when converting to TIF.

As you can see, with the available functions sparsely, but in the absence of better option, you can use what is at hand.

Installation and preparation of the program for work

Installation is performed using a standard installer, with which problems should not arise. You don't need to change anything during installation, so all our actions are reduced to clicking the "Next" button. After completing the installation process, we will see the main window of the Free MDI Image Viewer:

By default, it opens to full screen, which is not very convenient, but it can be easily reduced to the right sizes with the mouse. If you are not confused by the English-language interface of the program, then you can start using it without additional manipulations.

If you want to Russify Free MDI Image Viewer, then replace the original file “ FreeMDIImageViewer.exe"In the" Program Files "folder with a similar file that you will find in the archive downloaded from our site. In addition to the Russification of the menu, you will also get the ability to open files in TIF and TIFF formats (including multi-page ones!).

Working with a Russified program

Unfortunately, Free MDI Image Viewer does not support the Drag & Drop function, so you will have to open files for viewing using the program's menu. We open the first menu "File" and press the button "Open". A file selection window will appear with the default active filter for MDI files. However, if you have used our localization tool, then by clicking on the "File type" field, you can also select filters for TIF and TIFF documents:

Let's not be too smart and choose what we installed the program for, that is, the MDI file. Highlight desired file and click open. Be prepared for the fact that Free MDI Image Viewer may take a long time to open your MDI document and even freeze sometimes! Be patient and wait a minute - the file should open:

In the file view mode, the program workspace is divided into two panels:

• on the left is a thumbnail panel that displays thumbnails of document pages;
• on the right is the preview pane of the selected page thumbnail.

With help context menu or the "View" menu, we can control the page view (although it's easier to do this with the mouse). Alas, here you will not find functions for rotating scanned images and cropping them, but they are not so often required. Also, the function of selecting and copying the layer of the recognized text directly from the program would not hurt.

Looking at the thumbnail panel gives the impression that the text on the page thumbnail still stands out, but unfortunately this is not the case. Perhaps, in the next releases of the program, the author implements this opportunity, but for now you have to be content with little ...

Export to graphic formats and extract content

So, viewing MDI and multi-page TIFF files is good in itself, but not enough :). It would be desirable to somehow also convert the document into a more universal form, and ideally also extract text and pictures from it. Not without unnecessary hemorrhoids, but do it with help Free MDI Image Viewer possible. To do this, the first thing you need to do is go to the "File" menu and select the "Save As" list:

The program allows us to convert an MDI document into one of the popular graphic formats(JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF and TIF) for your choice. However, there are a couple of features:

1. For all formats (except TIF), saving is carried out page by page. That is, you will have to manually select each page and save it under a new name.
2. The TIF format is saved in multi-page mode by default. That is, all pages of an MDI document are packed into one graphic file without the need to save them separately. At the same time, if you open such a TIF image with a regular graphical viewer, we will see only the first page. To view all the others, you will need either an advanced photo viewer, or a special reader, or a full-fledged graphic editor.
3. The good news is that when saving to TIF Free MDI Image Viewer sometimes saves the layer with the recognized text if it existed in the original MDI file. The only trouble, because of the complex structures in this layer, the program sometimes refuses to save to TIF, giving an error :(. In this case, we will have to use page-by-page conversion to ordinary graphic files.

Now that our MDI file has been converted, it's time to think about how you can get the content out of it. The simplest and universal way here, of course, text recognition using special programs.

Of the free, alas, there is only one single application CuneiForm, which is on our site. You will need to open all the saved images in it and recognize them by saving text and graphic data to a file.

The situation with the TIF format is somewhat more complicated ... Once Ruslan Bogdanov told me that multi-page TIF files can be opened in Photoshop and copied from them text from the recognition layer. However, I deliberately tried to repeat the experience and nothing came of it :(. Moreover, on the Internet I found many pages of debate about such a possibility, and almost all of them boiled down to the fact that such a function is a myth ...

Nevertheless, the format successfully opens in the graphics editor GIMP, although I did not manage to copy the text from the file :(.

There is an even more difficult path, which is still more likely to lead you to success. This method consists in converting a TIF file into PDF format, and then using the viewer to try to copy the text from it.

You can convert a TIFF document to PDF, for example, using the FastStone Image Viewer, and the easiest way to try to copy the text is Foxit Reader.

Advantages and disadvantages of the program

• viewing MDI files;
• the ability to view multipage TIFF documents;
• page-by-page export to graphic formats;
• export to multipage TIF with support for recognition layer.

• files take too long to open;
• there is no way to copy text from the recognition layer;
• there is no direct export to PDF function;
• not always correct export to TIF.

conclusions

In the face of Free MDI Image Viewer, we have a simple, but work program to view MDI documents. In the absence of an opportunity to install the "native" Microsoft Office Document Imaging, this application is perhaps the only one possible way open the scans created in it. Yes, not just open, but also save in the form of images, which then you can at least recognize, at least print.

The only disappointment is the not always stable operation of the program and the absence of its 64-bit version (although it may work on 64-bit systems - try it;)). Good luck and less headache with a variety of formats :).

P.S. It is allowed to freely copy and cite this article, provided that an open active link to the source is indicated and the authorship of Ruslan Tertyshny is preserved.

If you cannot open the MDI file on your computer - there may be several reasons. The first and at the same time the most important (occurs most often) is the absence of a corresponding application serving MDI among those installed on your computer.

The most in a simple way the solution to this problem is to find and download the appropriate application. The first part of the task has already been done - the software supporting the MDI file can be found below. Now it is enough to download and install the corresponding application.

In the further part of this page you will find other possible reasons, causing problems with MDI files.

Program (s) that can open the file .MDI

Windows

Possible problems with the MDI format files

The inability to open and work with the MDI file should not mean at all that we do not have the corresponding software... There may be other problems that also block our ability to work with Microsoft file Office Document Imaging File Format. Below is a list of possible problems.

• Corruption of the opened MDI file.
• Incorrect links to the MDI file in registry entries.
• Accidentally deleting the MDI extension description from windows registry
• Incomplete installation of an application that supports the MDI format
• The MDI file being opened is infected with unwanted, harmful software.
• There is not enough space on the computer to open the MDI file.
• The drivers for the hardware used by the computer to open the MDI file are out of date.

If you are sure that all of the above reasons are absent in your case (or have already been excluded), the MDI file should work with your programs without any problems. If the problem with the MDI file has not been solved, it may be due to the fact that in this case there is another rare problem with the MDI file. In this case, only the help of a specialist remains.

How do I associate a file with an installed program?

If you want to link a file with new program(eg moj-plik.MDI) You have two options. The first and easiest is to press right click mouse to the selected MDI file. From open menu select an option Select default program " then option "Revise" and find the required program. The whole operation must be confirmed by clicking the OK button.

Whether there is a universal method opening unknown files?

Many files contain data in the form of text or numbers. It is possible that while opening unknown files (e.g. MDI) popular in Windows system a simple text editor, which is Notatnik will allow us to see some of the data encoded in the file. This method allows you to view the contents of many files, but not in the same form as the program designed to serve them.

Microsoft Document Imaging (or MDI for short) is used by the program from the main Windows package called Microsoft Office Document Imaging. The base is TIFF, but MDI has many advantages. For example, it not only provides best quality images, but also has a smaller file size. It is also worth mentioning that it is possible to save text along with images in both formats. However, you can edit MDI images only in the native program.

The program itself from the office suite has both advantages and disadvantages. The user-friendly interface allows you to increase the useful area of ​​the monitor screen and reduce clutter. Application windows can be shown, hidden, maximized, and minimized. Subsidiaries can be cascaded or tiled in the main window. It is also important to note the savings in memory and the increase in speed while working in one window. The program provides "hot button combinations" that allow you to use quick navigation, which makes working with the application even faster and more convenient, since it does not involve additional resources.

It is rather difficult to display the content of multiple windows on different monitors, and it is also impossible to display the content on different virtual desktops. In addition, when working with the MDI format, than opening which, you already know, it is difficult to work in parallel with several applications at the same time, since it is rather inconvenient to switch between windows. And also some chaos in the program is noted if several windows are open at the same time.

It should be said that the "native" program is included only in Office 2007, more earlier versions the question will arise again when the MDI format appears, how to open it. You won't be able to install Document Imaging on Windows XP either. In the event that you do not have a program from the Office 2007 office suite, or you do not want to spend money on it, the MDI Viewer can be useful to you.

However, even development from a package may not always open the MDI extension. To solve this problem, you need to do the following.

In the event that at double click on the MDI file in the program from the package does not open, and instead an error message appears on the desktop, you must follow the steps below. The reason for this failure is that the program is not installed when the MDI file is opened.

1. In the "Start" menu, select the line "Run", enter the command appwiz.cpl, then click on "OK".

2. In the list installed programs need to choose Office version 2007 installed on the computer.

3. Select the "Change" button.

4. Select the item "Add components", then click on "Continue".

5. You must expand the Office Tools node.

6. Here we select Microsoft Office Document Imaging, set the value for the "Run all" program.

7. Click on the "Continue" button.

These steps should help you solve the problem with the MDI format rather than open it.

In addition, the file can be exported to tiff format using the MDI Viewer, which you can download for free. So, having seen the MDI format, you know how to open it: either by a program from the Office 2007 suite, or by using the MDI Viewer. This is a fairly simple development, although a little inconvenient compared to the Office program, which allows you to view MDI files, as well as print, export to TIFF, scale the picture in height and width, and rotate by 90̊ °.

With development computer technology, the development of new programs and more advanced operating systems, more and more new ones appear. And it is not always very easy to open and edit them. Many of the updated data formats that were developed after the 2007 Office OS did not open on later operating systems standard package programs. Sometimes you even have to use online convectors to convert After all, not everyone today can deliver the latest operating system... Hopefully, now that you see an MDI file, you will know for sure how to open it.