Mac Forum / Applications / MS Office / June 2006

MDI files are Microsoft Office Document Imaging - a proprietary MS format
that I believe they were trying to get accepted in favour of PDF format -
it's a similar sort of philosophy, except that where PDF works on just about
every platform available, MDI only works in Office for Windows, v2003 and
higher (in fact, the MDI print driver appears to have been removed from
Office 2007). They are far more than " Microsoft's version of the .tiff
format".

Unfortunately, there are no ways to read these docs on a mac - even the
venerable GraphicConverter can't handle them. Can't you get your
correspondents to send the data in another format? Almost nobody I know uses
MDI. If they are scanned paper documents, then TIFF4 or PDF are far better
(and more widely available) alternatives.

Hi Macjammer -

If it's any comfort to you, .mdi files are just as much a frustration to
Windows users as they are to you. MS Office Document Imaging seems to be the
only app that can save/open files in that format. Even the Windows version
of Acrobat Professional, Illustrator & PhotoShop can't do anything with
them. They then have to be reopened in that app and handled in a variety of
different ways from there depending on how the content is to be used in what
program. Below is a response from MVP Bob Buckland to a user in the Word ng
for Windows:

=========

See the additional interjections below:

You & most everyone else who has the misfortune of encountering them.

Only because whoever is creating them doesn't know how (or is too lazy) to
output the scanned data into a *usable* format. Unless the whole group from
which they are being sent are gluttons for punishment I wouldn't expect this
'trend' to last very long... especially if you give it the proper push.

Nor will anything other than MSODI, as indicated above.

Most likely 'sound' advice from Windows addicts who have no concept of what
a Mac is nor the freedom to choose for themselves what system they can
use... the human animal is always most critical of that which it doesn't
understand :) Especially true in this case, as you're essentially being told
that since *they* don't know how to cure the headache you might as well
inflict more serious pain in order to take your mind off it.

Compatible, yes, Identical, no. As long as there are fundamental differences
in the respective OS there will always be some mavericks that are unique to
one or the other - and quite often that's a *good* thing. The key issue
here - if I might pontificate a little more - is that 'compatiblity' is
something to which two or more parties must be willing to strive for - it
rarely "just happens". I believe that the thrust of Roz's position is that
there is more than ample common ground as long as one side doesn't insist on
shooting itself in the foot to spite the other:)