How to open MDI files in Office 2007

Posted on August 23, 2008 at 5:18 am

An MDI file, which stands for Microsoft Document Imaging, is a proprietary Microsoft image format used for storing images of scanned documents along with certain metadata about the file. If you have Office 2003 installed on your computer, you will see Microsoft Document Image Writer as a virtual printer in your list of Printers.

In case you cannot print to a normal printer or if you simply want to have a digital copy of whatever your are printing, you can print to the MDI printer and save the file with a .MDI extension. The file can only be opened by a Microsoft program, namely Microsoft Document Imaging that comes with Office 2003.

As long as you are on your own computer, you will be able to open the MDI file, but if you try to open the file on a computer that is running Office 2007 or if you decide to upgrade to Office 2007, you may notice that you can no longer open the file.

The reason this happen is because by default Office 2007 does not install Microsoft Document Imaging. So if you want to open the MDI file in Office 2007, you have to install the feature manually.

First note that if you have Microsoft OneNote installed on your computer, you can use it to open MDI files without needing to install Microsoft Document Imaging.

To install MDI, go to the Control Panel and click on Add/Remove Programs or Uninstall a program if you are in Vista.

Next scroll down to Microsoft Office 2007 (Professional, Standard, Home, , Plus, etc) and highlight it. You should see the Change button, so click on that.

Make sure Add/Remove Features is selected and then click on Continue.

Now expand Office Tools and click on the drop down menu next to Microsoft Office Document Imaging and select Run All From My Computer.

MDI will be installed onto your computer and you’ll see a new virtual printer called “Microsoft Office Document Image Writer” in the list of printers. You can now create MDI files and view them without a problem. Enjoy!

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6 Responses to “How to open MDI files in Office 2007”

Pete Rosek said on : September 26th, 2008 at 11:03 am

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

Once I found out about MDI printing in Office 2003… I LOVED IT!

I have been quite frustrated and greatly missed this printing option. Thanks for the install information. I’m back to normal (as much as I can).

Diana Rockholm said on : October 1st, 2008 at 5:42 pm

we tried this manual installation on one of our vista machines, and my guy steve sez the documents now open all garbled and unreadable.

do you know what to do now?

thanks oooooo so much.

diana

AnneSC said on : October 6th, 2008 at 8:08 pm

EXCELLENT. Followed your instructions on my vista machine and it worked like a charm. Thanks for the easy to follow instructions.