PMD File Documentation

Summary

A PageMaker document (.pmd) is a page-layout file created by Adobe PageMaker, the desktop-publishing program Aldus released in 1985 and Adobe discontinued in 2004. It stores a complete layout: formatted text in linked blocks, placed images, master pages and print settings. Its MIME type is application/vnd.pagemaker. Because modern InDesign no longer imports it, the reliable route is to open it in PageMaker 6.5/7.0 or an older InDesign, then export a PDF.

Technical details

FeatureValue
Full nameAdobe PageMaker document
File extension.pmd
MIME typeapplication/vnd.pagemaker
Format typeProprietary desktop-publishing layout (binary)
DeveloperAdobe Systems (originally Aldus Corporation)
IntroducedPageMaker 1.0, 1985 (Mac); .pmd is the 6.x/7.0 document extension
Final versionPageMaker 7.0 (2001); line discontinued 2004
SpecificationProprietary, never publicly published by Adobe
Open standardNo
Magic numberNo stable public signature (identify by extension/context)
Scripting/macrosNone
SuccessorAdobe InDesign (.indd)
Sibling versions.pm6, .pm5, .p65 (earlier PageMaker documents)
Related extensions.indd, .pub, .pt6, .pmt
Opens inPageMaker 6.5/7.0; older InDesign (CS2–CS6); LibreOffice Draw (partial)
Modern InDesign (CC)Cannot import .pmd (PageMaker filter removed)
Structure at a glance

A .pmd is a proprietary binary layout container. Adobe never published the format, so there is no reliable magic-byte signature to detect it — a .pmd is identified by its extension and context (it sits in a PageMaker job folder alongside linked images). Internally it records the document’s master pages, text blocks (stories) with their style definitions, placed images (linked or embedded), drawn objects, and the spot/process colour and print setup. Do not confuse it with the unrelated MikuMikuDance .pmd 3D model, which is a different binary format.

What is a PMD file?

A .pmd file is a document made in Adobe PageMaker, one of the programs that started the desktop-publishing era. Aldus Corporation shipped PageMaker 1.0 in 1985 for the original Macintosh, pairing it with the Apple LaserWriter and PostScript to let people set full pages on screen. Adobe bought Aldus in 1994 and continued the line until PageMaker 7.0 (2001), then discontinued it in 2004 and pointed professional users at Adobe InDesign. The .pmd extension belongs to the later releases (PageMaker 6.x and 7.0); earlier versions wrote .pm6, .pm5 and .p65.

A single .pmd holds an entire page layout: formatted text flowed through linked text blocks, images placed on the page (linked to external files or embedded), drawn rules and boxes, master-page elements that repeat across pages, and the colour and print settings for output. It is a saved job, not a portable graphic — the file describes where everything goes on numbered pages rather than storing a flat picture.

A proprietary, undocumented binary container

PageMaker’s document format is closed. Adobe never published a specification, and there is no stable, reliable magic number you can use to detect a .pmd from its first bytes. That is the honest technical situation: unlike PNG or PDF, which announce themselves with a fixed signature, a PageMaker document is recognised by its extension and by the company it keeps — it normally lives in a job folder next to the linked images and fonts it references. Tools that open .pmd files do so with format-specific readers built from reverse engineering, not from a public spec.

Because the layout links to external images rather than always embedding them, a .pmd separated from its linked graphics may open with missing or low-resolution placeholders. When you archive a PageMaker job, keep the whole folder, not just the .pmd.

What the file stores

The document’s internal parts map onto PageMaker’s own concepts:

ElementWhat it holds
Master pagesRepeating items: running headers, footers, page numbers, column guides
Text blocks / storiesFormatted copy flowed through linked frames, with paragraph and character styles
Placed imagesGraphics linked to external files or embedded, including art from other Adobe apps
Drawn objectsRules, boxes and shapes created inside PageMaker
Colour & print setupSpot and process colour definitions and print/output metadata

Why modern InDesign will not open a PMD

This is the trap most people hit. Early InDesign shipped a PageMaker import filter, so CS-era releases (roughly CS2 through CS6) could open a .pmd and convert it to a native .indd. Adobe removed that filter from later versions, so current InDesign (the Creative Cloud releases) cannot import a .pmd at all. A brochure or newsletter laid out in the 1990s can therefore fail to open in any software a designer has installed today, even Adobe’s own successor product.

There are three realistic recovery paths. First, open the file in a surviving copy of PageMaker 6.5 or 7.0 — it still runs on older Windows and Mac systems, or inside a virtual machine — and export what you need. Second, use an older CS-era InDesign that still had the PageMaker filter to import the .pmd and re-save it as .indd, then move that forward to current software. Third, if you only need the words and pictures, LibreOffice Draw can open some PageMaker documents through the open-source libpagemaker import library, though layout fidelity is partial.

Getting the layout or the text back out

What matters in an old .pmd is usually its content, and that survives even when the exact page design does not. From a working PageMaker (or an older InDesign that imports it) you can Print or Export to PDF to preserve the visual layout as a shareable, archival copy, or export the stories to RTF/TXT to recover editable text without the design. Rasterising pages to PNG or JPG gives you a picture of each page when nothing else works. None of these makes the file editable in modern layout software, but they rescue the parts people actually need.

Not the MikuMikuDance PMD

The .pmd extension is reused by unrelated software. The most common collision is MikuMikuDance (MMD), a free Japanese 3D animation tool whose .pmd is a humanoid character model — a completely different binary format opened in MMD, PMD Editor, or Blender with a plugin. If your file came from an animation or MMD context and exports to .obj or .pmx, it is a 3D model, not a PageMaker layout. A PageMaker document is 2D page data and has no 3D geometry, so it cannot become an .obj. Several other programs also save their own project or data files as .pmd; when in doubt, identify the file by the application that created it.

References