Publishing Your Visio Drawing

You can publish your Visio drawing to people who does not have Visio installed on their computers.  You can even publish your drawing online as a standard Web page:

  1. Publish it as-is and let people download the free Visio Viewer to view the drawing.

  2. Or publish it as a picture and optionally show it inside of a Web page.

visio_logo_32x32.gif (1061 bytes) 1. Using the Free Visio Viewer to View Your Drawing

A free Viewer is available from here.  Once installed, you can double click a Visio drawing and show it within Internet Explorer.   This way, people without Visio on their computer can view your drawing.

Simply tell people this Web address, optionally with a short instruction on how to download and install it.  Then you can publish your drawing in its original format.

visio_logo_32x32.gif (1061 bytes) 2. Publishing Your Drawing as A Picture

You can publish your drawing as a picture so that anyone with a Web browser can view it, offline or online:

visio_FlowChart_3.png (8862 bytes)

  1. Choose menu File > Save As.

  2. Choose a Type from the following list:

visio_HowTo_Publish_Type.png (7254 bytes)

Note that:

  1. GIF, JPG, and PNG are the picture types that have the most extensive support by different Web browsers (such as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator).  Try different types for the best display and the smallest file size.

  2. With type HTML Files, you will get a GIF file and a simple Web page.

Using Other Tools to Prepare Your Picture

With the Save As describe above, the picture quality may not be as good as your original drawing, or the file size may be too big for publishing online.  You can instead prepare your picture with other tools by capturing and saving the screen image of your drawing.  This takes a bit more time but gives you the best picture quality and the smallest file size. 

This section walks you step by step to prepare your picture as a PNG file (pronounced "ping") with Paint -- a free tool of Windows. 

Why PNG?  Among the 3 widely supported file types:

File Type Colors Supported Image Quality File Size
PNG unlimited as the original small
JPG unlimited good for photos, poor for others. large
GIF 256 good for drawings with limited colors small

PNG is the file type that will best present your drawing with a small file size. 

1. Capturing Your Picture Image on the Screen

  1. Maximize the entire Visio window.  Turn off rulers, grids and connection points. Hide all toolbars.

  2. Show your drawing nicely on the screen.  Reduce the zoom size (such as from 100% to 75%) to show it all.

Smiley_01.gif (634 bytes) Tip: To deal with a large drawing:

  1. Capture the drawing as several pictures then put them together with your drawing tool or a Web page. 

  2. Or show it as a small overview (See the top of this page for a sample) with another picture for details:
    visio_FlowChart_3_enlarged.png (5144 bytes)

  1. Press the PrtSc key. The entire screen image is captured.

2. Using Paint to Edit and Save the Picture

  1. Open Paint: Start > All Programs > Accessories

  2. Choose menu Edit > Paste.  The screen image shows in Paint.

  3. Move and resize the image till only the drawing is displayed.

  4. Choose menu File > Save As. Specify a File Name, such as My Visio Drawing, and choose PNG as the type.  Click the Save button.
    visio_HowTo_Publish_Paint.png (4204 bytes)

Smiley_01.gif (634 bytes) Tip: The PNG option is missing from some early versions of Windows.  If this is the case for you:

  1. Use a commercial tool, such as Paint Shop.

  2. Find a shareware, try www.download.com.

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