Visio files (.vsd)

[MichaelS-R]

Does anyone know of any way of reading Visio files under Fedora (or translating them to another format)? I really don't want to have to install Visio itself.

Thanks,

Michael

[roachy]

I believe you can export Visio files to XML to then import into Dia (but don't have a copy of Visio to hand to test this). There are projects underway to reverse the .vsd file format (see http://www.gnome.ru/fileformats/diagrams.html , http://freshmeat.net/projects/vsdump/ and http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/faq.html#VisioFiles)

P

[MichaelS-R]

Thanks, I will have a look at those. Exporting from Visio and then loading is not really the issue. This is for lots of archive stuff that I just need to look at but don't want to have to load and resave... a batch conversion to pdf or similar would have been perfect. As a last resort, I will have to load them all up and export but I am really trying to avoid that if I can.

Thanks for the links,

Michael

[roachy]

Tested using an old XP virtual machine w/ Visio 2007 and if you export to .vdx files, they open ok in Dia

As for the batch conversion, I found the following on EE:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Micr..._23227765.html

If you aren't registered on EE, i've copied and pasted here:

The code below is the sort of thing I referred to in my previous post -- it will open all files in the same directory as the vsd containing this code, and resave each as a vdx.

If processing all files in the same directory isn't what you have in mind, you could change the code to prompt for a directory then do the same for that directory.

Sub SaveAsVDX()
 
Dim currentDoc As String
Dim CurFileName As String
Dim docObj As Visio.Document
Dim PathFileName As String
Dim PathName As String, vdxName As String
 
currentDoc = ActiveDocument.Name    ' Remember the current VSD name so it can be ignored.
 
PathName = ActiveDocument.Path      ' Set the default pathname
PathFileName = PathName & "*.vsd"
 
' Find the first file from the directory (not necessarily the first alphabetically)
CurFileName = Dir(PathFileName)
 
Do While CurFileName <> ""
    If CurFileName <> currentDoc Then ' ignore the current document
        ' Open the file
        PathFileName = PathName & CurFileName
        Set docObj = Documents.Open(PathFileName)
            
        vdxName = Left(PathFileName, Len(PathFileName) - 3) & "vdx"
        docObj.SaveAs vdxName
        docObj.Close
    End If ' Finished ignoring the current document
    
    CurFileName = Dir ' Find the next Visio drawing
Loop
 
End Sub

Hope this helps

[MichaelS-R]

Roachy - absolutely brilliant, thanks. I shall give it a try. I must admit that a native linux reader would be the best option but at least this gets me over the most immediate hurdle. I do have a life to get on with too! :-)

[roachy]

No probs mate Glad to have helped.

I must admit I used Visio a lot myself previously before migrating to Ubuntu and then Fedora. I've used Dia for all new stuff and old stuff was exported to PDF anyway. Dia is a pretty functional alternative to work with....

[MichaelS-R]

Actually I have been using QCad - much more a traditional cad package than Visio. But it does do the job. Mostly for design, rather than business graphics which is, after all, where Visio stands out.