Installation
Most 3di users work in an institutional setting where an IT department manages their computer. Normally, you will need to ask your IT support to install the 3di for you.
Users who manage their own computer directly:
When you sign up for training, we will send you detailed download and installation instructions before the course. This page contains a copy of those instructions.
IT support teams:
The rest of this page including Installing in an institutional setting explains how to set up the 3di for your users.
Please ensure you understand The 3di licence and Looking after your data before installing the 3di software.
Windows and Office
The 3di software requires:
Microsoft Windows 10 or Windows 11.
Microsoft Office 365, including both the Word and Access components.
Microsoft provide many subscription options for Office, which are constantly changing. All but the cheapest plans include Access. Check here for personal subscriptions, or here for business plans. If in doubt, contact us.
Obtain the installer
To get started, you will need a copy of the installer file.
The installer has a filename like 3di5_uk_230122_setup.exe. This filename includes the version number 230122 of the software in yymmdd format, that is year month day. A suffix denotes a sub revision.
You will receive a copy of the installer file prior to your training course. To find the installer, open the Windows Start menu and type '3di5_uk'. If the installer file is present on your machine, a file name ending in 'setup.exe' will appear in the list.
If you cannot find the installer, please get in touch for a new copy. There is typically a charge for this service and we may require you to upgrade to a more recent version, since we cannot offer technical support for very old 3di versions.
The instructions below cover the current 3di versions that we distribute. Steps to install very old 3di versions can be found here.
Installation steps
Run the 3di installer.
You may be asked if you trust the installer file. Say Yes.
You will need to agree to the licence.
Choose the installation folder. The default is your desktop, which is fine for most users.
Click the Install button.
The 3di installer will run to completion and you can click the Close button.
Once the installer has completed, launch the 3di by double-clicking the 3di5_run shortcut on your desktop.
The first time you run the 3di you will have to tell Access that you trust the software. These steps only need to be performed once.
Click OK when you see an error saying that active content is blocked.
When the following dialog appears, click on Stop all macros.
On the yellow bar near the top of the window, click Enable content.
If you have navigated the above warnings correctly, you should now see the Main menu window with 'no backend' loaded.
Continue to Confirming the 3di is working.
Confirming the 3di is working
Open the 3di and navigate to the purple Main menu.
Click Select and open backend.
Choose the backend named Training5 from the list, then click Open selected backend.
Open the Case Manager by clicking the 🙂 button on the Add-ins ribbon.
Choose any child from the Find: dropdown at the top of the form.
Click the button Generate full report. Within a minute this should produce a Word document. The document may open in the background. If you can't see it, check the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.
Verify that the 3di interview forms open properly:
In the Case Manager, click on the button Revisit interview on the salmon-coloured central portion of the form.
Opening the interview can take 30 seconds or so on a slower machine, so ignore any early messages about "Access not responding". If an interview form doesn't appear in under two minutes, this may indicate a problem with your Access installation and you should contact us.
Close the 3di by clicking the 🗙 at the top-right of the application window.
Installing in an institutional setting
These instructions apply if your computer is managed by someone other than the clinician who will be using the software.
You may find that your computer has administrative policies applied which mean you, the clinician, do not have permission to install the 3di or other software. If this is the case for your computer, please show these instructions to your IT department.
The rest of this section assumes that you are an IT administrator with the necessary powers to install software on the target machine.
Dependencies
The target machine will need Windows and Office installed, as described above. Microsoft Access must be installed, and your institutional policy may exclude this by default.
Simple installations
If the clinician's machine is a regular Windows installation with their software and documents stored locally on the hard disk (not on a network share), then installation is straightforward.
The contents of the 3di installation folder must be readable and writeable by whichever Windows account the clinician uses to run the software and administer assessments. By default, the 3di installs to the user's Desktop folder, which usually meets this condition. Elsewhere in their user folder is fine too. Installing under Program Files will not work since unprivileged users do not have write permissions for this folder.
Since 2025, the 3di installer does not automatically run as Administrator. Since it only copies files into a folder which must be user-writeable, typically the user's Desktop, elevated privileges are not needed or helpful. If you run the installer as Administrator and install to a folder which the regular user cannot write to, you will be left with an unusable installation.
Typically then, you can just follow the instructions above aimed at regular users.
In the rare event that Microsoft Access Runtime is present from a prior 3di installation (pre 2021), this should be uninstalled to ensure that Access database files are associated with the most recent installed version of Office, and not the Runtime.
To test your install was successful, follow the steps in Confirming the 3di is working.
Networked installations
The 3di is written in Microsoft Access. As with many Access applications, the 3di is split between two .mdb files, the so-called frontend and backend. The frontend is the part the user double-clicks to load in Access, and contains all of the code. The backend stores patient records. One frontend can switch between multiple backends. During the training course, trainees use the Training5 backend which contains sample data. After that they will create their own backend, and likely never think about backends again, since a backend can store any number of patient records. The usual reason to switch backends is to transfer data between machines or allow collaboration in a research setting.
While it is possible to store the frontend or backend on a network share, our experience is that on slow or laggy wifi with the backend stored remotely, the 3di software can become unusable. Due to the huge diversity of network technologies, in the event of a problem we will usually be unable to help and can only direct you to the Microsoft Access documentation, or your network/remote software vendor's support options.
The installation folder
After a fresh install, the 3di installation folder looks like this:
The default 3di install location is the user's Desktop folder. This is usually the best choice although anywhere the user has write access is fine (so not in C:\Program Files). The user needs to be able to find the 3di5_run shortcut which the installer places on the Desktop and in their Start Menu. This shortcut simply points to the frontend .mdb file and must be adjusted if you move the frontend after installation.
It is most simple and reliable to keep the whole folder intact. However it is also possible to keep the Backends folder on a drive separate from everything else. This might be desirable when patient data must live on a designated drive distinct from where programs are installed. To achieve this, move the Backends folder to the other drive, then from the 3di Main menu click Select and open backend and navigate to the new Backends location.
It is essential that all the other subfolders of the root installation folder (Resources etc.) are kept together in the same location relative to the frontend .mdb file, or the software will not work.
The installation folder is under 100 MB when new. Each new case created by the user typically adds under 1 MB to the Backends folder, including generated reports.
We recommend against placing the 3di folder on a cloud-synchronised storage service such as OneDrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive. Microsoft Word and cloud-sync tools do not always treat files with the same name and location as distinct documents, even if one has been deleted and recreated. In some circumstances, previously deleted content can reappear when a report is regenerated. For reliable behaviour, install the 3di in a local (non-cloud-synced) folder.
When running from a network share:
A slow or erratic connection to the share will result in a poor user experience.
You will need to tell Access that the frontend file can be trusted via the Access Trust Center. You must tick an additional checkbox to allow network locations to be trusted.
Backends must not be accessed by multiple copies of the 3di running concurrently. This will cause errors and probable data loss. Therefore in a networked setup you must make sure this is impossible.
If you configure the 3di to store its backend on a network drive but that drive isn't available (for example if it depends on a VPN service that hasn't started), the 3di will prompt the user to create a new backend on a local drive. Users may not understand what is going on, and end up being unable to find patient records.
Other notes
After installation, you should go through the steps in Confirming the 3di is working to ensure the clinician has a smooth experience when they first launch the 3di. Hitting a problem in the first clinical session is bad news!
You can perform an additional step to make the 3di easier to use:
With the 3di open, click File → Options → Customize ribbon.
In the right-hand pane, deselect every Office tab apart from Add-ins. This ensures that only the 3di toolbar is displayed, and hides toolbars that are irrelevant.
Click OK to exit.
The installer can be run silently (for example as part of a script for use with SCCM or other software deployment tools) and with the installation path set from the command line using the
/Sand/Dswitches respectively. The installer is built using NSIS, therefore the standard NSIS flags are available as documented in section 3.2.1 here.
Running the 3di on a Mac
The 3di software is designed for Windows and we cannot officially support running it on Apple Mac computers.
Some users do run the 3di on a Mac using software such as Parallels, which allows Windows applications to run within macOS. For technically confident users, setting this up is usually straightforward. However, we cannot provide technical support for this configuration, and you will have to proceed 'at your own risk'. If the 3di doesn't work on your Mac, we likely will not be able to help.
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