Publishing Your Visio Drawing

You can publish your Visio drawing to people who does not have Visio installed on their computers:

  1. Publishing your drawing with Easy Publish - another tool in the Amazing Visio tool set.

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

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

visio_logo_32x32.gif (1061 bytes) 1. Publishing Your Drawing with Easy Publish

You can easily publish your drawing with Easy Publish - another tool in the Amazing Visio tool set.  This tool saves you tons of hassle and offers much better user experiences.  Please click here for details.

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

For a single page drawing, you can publish it 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.  For example, drawings displayed on this page and the home page have been prepared this way.

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

Smiley_03.gif (675 bytes) Why PNG?  Among the 3 widely supported file types on the Web:

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 can best present your drawing with a small file size. 

In addition, Visio offers "scalable" file formats, such as WMF (Windows Metafile) and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics Drawing).  The display of these files can be enlarged or reduced while the quality of the display is not affected. 

However, these files have limitations:

  1. They are either supported by Internet Explorer only (such as WMF), or requires a stand-alone download for all the browsers (such as SVG).

  2. They are much bigger than PNG files.  For example, the PNG picture on this demo page is 75KB while its WMF file is 685KB (8 times bigger); the file size for the entire demo is 2.6MB vs. 46.5MB (17 times bigger).

It is recommend that you use PNG as the file format to ensure the broadest browser support and avoid user interruption with any extra download.  This is also the format used by Easy Publish - an Amazing Visio tool to easily and effectively publish your drawing offline and online.

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.  This drawing display, for example, is composed of three pictures.

  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.

visio_logo_32x32.gif (1061 bytes) 3. 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.

 

See also: Using Visio Drawing in Other Software, Do I Need To Deploy Amazing Visio Stencils Along with My Drawing?