Microsoft Document Imaging (.mdi) problem
 

Ok, it's my turn to beg for a drink at the fountain of knowledge :D

I use Microsoft Document Imaging pretty much for all of my electronic printing - web pages, letters, etc. MDI is an nifty little (optional) component of MS Office, which creates a virtual printer and allows you to create pdf-like documents in .mdi format. I've always found it a lighter, cleaner and simpler alternative to Adobe, to say nothing of the fact that it's free (well, it's included ;) with MS Office at no extra charge)

Imperceptibly I started to experience problems opening .mdi files that I've created, with the following symptoms:

If I try to open a file, the little viewer app opens up and slows down the computer, almost to a halt. If nothing else is running I may succeed, after a minute or so after hitting Ctr-Alt-Del, in bringing up the Task Manager.

The task manager typically shows normal-to-low CPU and RAM utilization, however the hard drive continues to spin like crazy, even with a small (less than 1 MB) file, and it seems that that's what bogging down the system.

The same behavior is observed when trying to open a file I created on a different, ostensibly "clean", computer.

What I've done is uninstall and reinstall the MDI component in MS Office installer.

My initial thought was that perhaps my almost 90% full HD was to blame, as the files I create somehow become very fragmented, however like I said, when I try to open a file saved to a USB key on a clean computer, the same outcome is observed.

PLEASE HELP!

PS Running vista home, ms office 03

Dunno about your case, but a recent update (forget what) basically killed MDI for me... Any long file names in the recent file history make it crash when I pull down the File menu. I have to edit the file names to shorten them and use regedit to remove the recent file list. I now create PDFs instead; that way I won't be stuck without a way to read my files.

There's something to be said for the compatibility of PDF. Microsoft has a free plugin that lets you save Office files as PDFs: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en (EDIT: I see you are using Office 2003; this may only work for Office 2007, though there are other freeware third-party options that would let you create PDFs)

There appear to be a few utilities allowing MDI viewing. Maybe you could try one of them: http://www.tucows.com/preview/503893 or http://www.bugysoft.com/product_en.html?gl=1#gui

The latter ( MDI2PDF Converter) allows viewing in the free version and conversion to PDF, etc. in the paid versions.

You know, I had a hunch that long file names may be a part of the problem, so I ve been trying to conscientiously replace the ellipsis that it adds after so many characters with a short file name...no dice.

So you just gave up on MDI?

(As a side note, the update business is positively irritating. I've turned off all the bells and whistles in Vista so that my desktop is basically a Win2000 look-alike, and it still stubbornly downloads and installs Windows Updates even though my setting is "never check for updates". I see them because it also creates restore points at the same time.)

Thank you very much indeed. In a pinch I guess I could also create a .pdf in Open Office, but I just like MDI better.

Now the utilities that you've mentioned are definitely something I am going to try, and very much appreciated. So in that scenario I'll be keeping the MDI component installed for file creation, and just using a different viewer?...well, as far as workarounds go this would be a pretty good one ^

I will try that and report back,

Many thanks! :-:

If I were in your situation, I'd try to find something that lets me view MDI files I already created (and maybe convert them) and then transition to creating new files in PDF format instead of MDI format.

Hi all.

Just to jump in here with a wee side note.

I too use the facility to print to .mdi quite a bit, for instance when I make hotel / flight bookings, to print the booking confirmation to save so I can print on a printer at a later stage & also so as to keep a soft copy for future use.

However, I’ve recently got a Net book, which I don’t particularly want to install MS Office on, so my question is……….

Is there a way to have the print to “Microsoft Document Imagining” option available, without having MS Office installed ??

I would install a free PDF program.
examples:
http://en.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator
http://www.primopdf.com/
http://www.cutepdf.com/

Well, it's a component of MS Office. So you'll have to install it from the MS Office CD, but you can go to the advanced setup option and just select MDI in the "component tree" that it will show and unselect everything else - see if you can do that

That's a good suggestion too.

So back to my issue, I installed the 3rd party MDIviewer, and it seems to do the same thing as the MS MDI viewer.

My old MDI documents seem to open fine, but the ones I've been creating over the last 2-3 months stall the system.

I had the Task Manager open while opening a newer MDI doc in the 3rd party viewer, and in addition to the spinning HD the RAM utilization by the app would intermittently jump from 10 MB to 400-500MB!!! It seemed that if the doc had graphics in it that may heve been triggering this crazy behavior...

I am loathe to give up on MDI but it seems that pdf is calling my name

Thanks for the links soitgoes I'll check them out ^

Thanks for that, I'll have a look see if I can work something out ^

Only thing is that I've no CD drive, it being a net book that I'm installing on. But I've an idea or two on a workaround for that.

PS. Apologies for hi-jacking your thread ;)