Chapter 7: Using Visio Diagrams with Other Programs

Overview

Perhaps that report you’re creating in Microsoft Word or the e-mail message you’re composing would be clearer if you included a Microsoft Office Visio 2003 flowchart of the process. Maybe you want to display your organization chart on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide. In most organizations, people create and share information in a number of different applications, and Visio is one of many desktop programs. Visio is designed to work with other applications. Diagrams and shapes can be displayed in other documents in a variety of ways, and information from other applications can be displayed in Visio as well.

As a part of the Microsoft Office System, Visio provides many of the same tools as Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003, and PowerPoint 2003 for sharing information. For example, you can use object linking and embedding (OLE) to place information from one application in another. You can also save Visio diagrams in alternative file formats, including Web-compatible graphics formats like GIF and JPEG, and e-mail Visio drawings right from your Visio toolbar. Just as you can use Visio data in different ways in other applications, you can pull all kinds of graphic or text information into Visio drawings.

This chapter provides the ins and outs of getting data in and out of Visio.