The ability of LibreOffice to open and edit Visio formats is useful. A Visio diagram or flowchart can be enhanced by a graphic artist in Draw. Draw has the tools to combine various elements of a diagram, so it can easily be copy and pasted into a Writer or Word document.ĭraw gives users the ability to create flowcharts and diagrams, but it also is designed with graphic artists in mind, as well. Screenshots can be taken, but the resulting image may not be as clear as the vector-based elements created in Visio.
Sometimes it’s important to include a diagram (or part of one) in a report. Draw can be used to open, edit, and convert those documents to open formats that are more accessible. Yet they still may have a need to keep old Visio documents readable well into the future. Microsoft Visio - Opening Files, To open a file in Visio, go to the File menu, which opens the backstage view and click Open. They may have stopped producing drawings themselves. There may have changed diagramming applications. Draw’s free-drawing tools can be used to enhance a diagram or flowchart.Īn organization or individual may no longer have a copy of Visio. Elements from a Visio diagram can be copy and pasted into a report open in a word processor. It is good for preserving Visio documents. LibreOffice Draw’s ability to open and edit Visio documents serves several purposes. For LibreOffice to convert documents to a format that most vector applications can open, such as SVG, they need to be exported. Most other vector applications cannot open these formats. They can only be opened by LibreOffice, OpenOffice, or NeoOffice. The open-source vector application can only save in these formats. When a Visio document is saved in Draw, the format choices are as follows: Draw, however, can keep most of the other elements from a Visio document, including glued connectors.ĭraw, however, cannot save the document in VSD or VSDX, like LibreOffice can with other Microsoft formats. The Microsoft application that is used to create flowcharts, network diagrams, org charts, floor plans, and engineering designs, has the ability to run macros that Draw and the other vector-applications cannot run.
While they have shapes and flowchart symbols, they also have free-drawing tools that are not present in Visio. The other applications are for graphic artists. Visio’s purpose is mainly to create diagrams, flowcharts, and similar types of drawings. Visio is a vector application, but it is different than Adobe Illustrator and those just mentioned. There are several other vector-drawing applications that can directly open and edit Visio documents. These formats cannot be opened by Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, even though Visio is considered to be an Office application. LibreOffice Draw can open standard Visio documents, which are in VSD and VSDX formats. The output is generated as an HTML file, which lists out the similarities and differences between the two diagrams.One interesting advantage LibreOffice has over Microsoft Office is that it works with some Microsoft products and formats that Office does not. The Compare command in the Organization Data section of the Org Chart tab lets you compare the contents of this org chart with another org chart or diagram open in Visio. You can customize the layout of this Org chart and add additional shapes, if needed. You can adjust the spacing between individual shapes and also change the height and width of all shapes in one click. In case of this file, you will also notice an Org Chart tab in the Ribbon that gives you additional options for working with the shapes in the chart, and also allows linking the shapes to data from external sources such as Excel. In the following example, we have opened an org chart and you can observe that the shape stencils corresponding to the org chart are now available in the Shapes pane. Once you open a Visio drawing, you will see that the user interface changes according to the drawing. Alternatively, click Browse and select the Visio drawing from a local or network folder. Click Add a Place to add Office 365 SharePoint or OneDrive location for quick access. The Recent section lets you directly access the recent drawings that you have opened or saved.īased on your setup, the Open menu lists some of the file locations that you can browse for Visio drawings. To open a file in Visio, go to the File menu, which opens the backstage view and click Open.