Extract text from Microsoft Document Imaging files (MDI)
To convert MDI documents to another format, you need Microsoft Office or other Raster Image software.
To convert other file formats to the "Document Imaging File" file type, you need software like Microsoft Office or a similar tool.
.MDI stands for Microsoft Document Imaging. It is a proprietary, tag-based image format created by Microsoft to store scanned documents and printed output via the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer. It is heavily based on the TIFF format but includes proprietary compression algorithms and embedded Optical Character Recognition (OCR) text data. You can read more about its history on Wikipedia.
Microsoft officially deprecated the MODI (Microsoft Office Document Imaging) component starting with Microsoft Office 2010. Today, modern operating systems like Windows 10 or 11 and web browsers cannot natively open .MDI files. To view them locally, a user must install obsolete, unsupported software like Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007. This vendor lock-in makes .MDI a terrible format for sharing or archiving in the modern era. For long-term archiving and universal document sharing, convert .MDI to PDF. For high-quality, lossless image extraction, convert to TIFF. For quick web sharing or viewing on mobile devices, convert to JPG or PNG. Note that converting the file will preserve the visual scan perfectly, but any hidden Microsoft-generated OCR text layer may be lost.
Convert.Guru analyzes your MDI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted MID, TIF, MD, MP3, PNG, PDF, JPG, MSI, SIG, PLA, XRDML, STEP and CDW files.
If you want to convert MDI file to PDF, TIFF, JPG, INDD, QXP, PUB, PMD, PM6, PM7, PM8, PM9 or PM10, you can use Microsoft Office or similar software from the "Scanned Document Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert PUB, PDP, PM4, P65, COMIC, WEBTEMPLATE, PMD, SPUB, INDD, PM5, QXP or OMP files to MDI, try Microsoft Office or another comparable tool in the "Scanned Document Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our MDI converter.