Microsoft Office Document Imaging

see also Microsoft Document Imaging Format

Microsoft Office Document Imaging (MODI) is a Microsoft Office application that supports editing documents scanned by Microsoft Office Document Scanning. It was first introduced in Microsoft Office XP and is included in later Office versions including Office 2007. It is no longer available in Office 2010. MODI allows users to Scan documents, recognize images using OCR, view a scanned document and Annotate scanned documents including using ink on a Tablet PC.

While the native file format of MODI seems to be MDI, MODI can read and write a small variety of TIFF files. It can also save OCR text into the original TIFF file. However, MODI produces .tif files which violate the TIFF standard and are usable only by the Microsoft Office Document Imaging products. JPEG format images can be recovered from these files using data carving recovery tools designed to cull intact files from images of damaged hard drives such as foremost. The OCR text in these files is visible in a binary editor.

In its default mode, the OCR engine will deskew and re-orient the page where required. If the objectname.save() method is called it will save the deskewed reoriented images back into the original image file.

Programmability

Via COM, MODI provides an object model based on 'document' and 'image' (page) objects. One feature that has elicited particular interest on the Web is MODI's ability to convert scanned images to text under program control, using its built-in OCR engine.

The MODI object model is accessible from development tools that support the Component Object Model (COM) by using a reference to the Microsoft Office Document Imaging 11.0 Type Library. The MODI Viewer control is accessible from any development tool that supports ActiveX controls by adding Microsoft Office Document Imaging Viewer Control 11.0 or 12.0 (MDIVWCTL.DLL) to the application project. These folders are usually located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MODI.

The MODI control became accessible in the Office 2003 release; while the associated programs were included in earlier Office XP, the object model was not exposed to programmatic control.

A simple example in Visual Basic .NET follows:

Dim inputFile As String = "C:\test\multipage.tif"
Dim strRecText As String = ""
Dim Doc1 As MODI.Document
 
Doc1 = New MODI.Document
Doc1.Create(inputFile)
Doc1.OCR()  ' this will ocr all pages of a multi-page tiff file
Doc1.Save() ' this will save the deskewed reoriented images, and the OCR text, back to the inputFile
 
For imageCounter As Integer = 0 To (Doc1.Images.Count - 1) ' work your way through each page of results
    strRecText &= Doc1.Images(imageCounter).Layout.Text    ' this puts the ocr results into a string
Next
 
File.AppendAllText("C:\test\testmodi.txt", strRecText)     ' write the OCR file out to disk
 
Doc1.Close() ' clean up
Doc1 = Nothing

Changes since Office 2003 Service Pack 3

In Office 2003 Service Pack 3, Microsoft removed the file association for .TIF and .TIFF file extensions with Microsoft Office Document Imaging as part of the Service Pack's security changes. Also, TIFF files can no longer use JPEG compression. . No detail is given about what the security issue was.

In Office 2010, MODI is fully deprecated. This change also affects the setup tree, which no longer shows the MODI Help, OCR, or Indexing Service Filter nodes on the Tools menu. The Internet Fax feature in Office 2010 uses the Windows Fax printer driver to generate a fixed file format (TIF). MODI and all its components are deprecated for 64-bit Office 2010.

Alternatives to MODI for Office 2010 Users

If running Office 2010 which lacks MODI, there are these alternatives (among others):

• Follow Microsoft's suggestions which includes an installation of only the MODI software from Microsoft Office 2007. (This installation process might also work with earlier versions of Office): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982760
• Install the Alterna-TIFF viewer: either ActiveX control (for IE) or browser plug-in (for other browsers): http://www.alternatiff.com/
• Install Black Ice's TIFF Viewer and plug-in: http://www.blackice.com/TIFFViewer.htm
• Install Cartesian Product's CPC viewer: either CPC View ax (ActiveX for IE) or CPC Lite pi (plug-in for other browsers): http://www.cartesianinc.com/Products/CPCLite/

External links

• Office - Document Imaging Microsoft online help for MODI users.
• You may experience issues when you run the Microsoft Office Document Imaging program after you install Office 2003 Service Pack 3 - Information on the changes caused by Office 2003 Service Pack 3
• [1] - Information on how to install Microsoft Office Document Imaging in Office 2007, as it is not installed automatically.
• Office 2003: Microsoft Office Document Imaging Visual Basic Reference (MODI)
• Using the Microsoft Office Document Imaging 2003 Object Model - Microsoft reference for programmers.