Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Frequently Asked Questions

Office Visio 2007 makes it easy for IT and business professionals to visualize, analyze, and communicate complex information, systems, and processes. Using professional-looking Office Visio 2007 diagrams, you can improve your understanding of systems and processes, gain insight into complex information, and use that knowledge to make better decisions for your business.

Quickly create diagrams with Office Visio 2007 by dragging shapes onto the drawing page—no freehand drawing skills are required. Then, easily add color themes, backgrounds, and titles to diagrams, such as business process flowcharts, timelines, organization charts, building plans, PivotDiagrams, and network, database, and facilities management diagrams.

New features and enhancements in Office Visio 2007 make Visio diagrams even easier and faster to create, as well as more professional-looking and more useful.

Office Visio 2007 also includes enhanced diagramming capabilities, new templates and shapes, improved methods for collaborating with other applications, and new advanced features for developers and power users.

See the top 10 reasons to use Office Visio 2007 for more information.

See the top 10 reasons to use Office Visio 2007.

Business and technical professionals who need to convey information in easy-to-understand diagrams benefit from using Office Visio 2007. Visio can help business professionals easily create diagrams that illustrate their business operations. For technical users such as IT professionals, software developers, engineers, and space planners, Visio provides intuitive diagramming tools that can help communicate complex processes, systems, and data through effective professional-looking diagrams.

While Word and PowerPoint provide basic diagramming capabilities, Office Visio 2007 is a dedicated diagramming tool with sophisticated drawing tools and templates that can help you easily create a broad range of diagrams and accomplish a wide range of tasks. In contrast to other 2007 Microsoft Office system programs, for example, you can connect Office Visio 2007 diagrams to data from external data source. Then, you can use Office Visio 2007 to visually track data from multiple data sources, store the data with shapes in diagrams, display the data in your diagrams, let the data drive the appearance of the diagram, and even export the data to reports. IT and business professionals can visually analyze complex tabular information with PivotDiagrams. You can also integrate Office Visio 2007 diagrams with other Microsoft Office system files, such as Microsoft Office Project 2007 schedules, Office Excel 2007 spreadsheets, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites to easily and efficiently collaborate on projects and integrate information sources that are often separate but contain related information.

Business and technical users typically perform the following diagram tasks using Office Visio 2007:

The critical first step in any business process management (BPM) effort is to create a clear picture of the entire process. Office Visio 2007 can help you visually document your organization's business processes, and even track data associated with specific tasks, providing deeper insight into how these processes work.

No. Using diagrams can be a powerful way to communicate information, but most graphics software programs require users to have artistic skills to create effective images; Visio is intended for people who don’t want to draw freehand but still want to use great-looking diagrams to convey important information. Quickly create diagrams with Office Visio 2007 by opening templates, dragging shapes onto the drawing page, and then applying themes to add the finishing touches to a diagram.

You start an Office Visio 2007 diagram by opening a template, which includes the shapes you need for the diagram type. Templates also include all the tools such as wizards and toolbars that you need to create a particular diagram type. Sample diagrams are real-world Office Visio 2007 diagrams that give you ideas for creating your own.

The PivotDiagram and Windows Workflow Services templates are new to Office Visio 2007.

Yes. For information on creating your own templates, read How to Create a Custom Template for Visio.

Stencils are Office Visio 2007 files that contain Visio 2007 shapes. Templates open stencils in windows to the left of the drawing page by default. You can move, close, or float the windows in the same way you can any other window in Office Visio 2007. To view stencils that are behind other windows, simply click the title bar of the window to bring it to the front of the windows. To create an Office Visio 2007 diagram, you drag shapes from stencils onto the drawing page. To open more stencils, click the Shapes button on the toolbar.

No, you don’t need to have Office Visio 2007 installed to view and print Visio diagrams. You can view and print them by using Visio Viewer in the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser. This comes in handy when you’re distributing diagrams to a wide audience, many of whom might not have Office Visio 2007 installed. However, you must have Office Visio 2007 installed to create and modify diagrams created in Office Visio 2007.

Yes. In Office Visio 2007, you can open and use any Visio diagram created with a previous version of Visio. You can also open an Office Visio 2007 diagram in Visio 2003 because they both use the same file format. You can open an Office Visio 2007 diagram in Visio 2002 by first saving the diagram in the Visio 2002 file format.

Note  Version-specific functionality will be unavailable after saving your diagram in a previous version of Visio.

The information in the Visio 2003 Getting Started Tutorial has been integrated into Visio Courses—the online training site for Visio.

The information in Visio Diagram Gallery has been integrated into the template information in the drawing category windows to make it easier to choose the template that’s appropriate for your diagram type.

Office Visio 2007 includes fewer diagram categories, so you can find templates more quickly. Due to this new organization, some categories were removed and the templates in those categories were recategorized:

Yes. You can draw your own shapes in Office Visio 2007 by using the drawing tools on the Drawing toolbar. To show the Drawing toolbar, right-click the Office Visio 2007 toolbar, and then click Drawing.

No. Office Visio 2007 is a stand-alone program. However, task-specific functionality requires particular programs be installed. For example, exporting Office Visio 2007 timelines to or importing Gantt charts from Office Project 2007 requires Project 2007 to be installed. Linking Office Visio 2007 diagrams to Office SharePoint Server 2007 lists requires SharePoint Server 2007 to be installed.

You can smoothly integrate Office Visio 2007 diagrams with programs in the Microsoft Office system to visualize business and technical ideas, concepts, processes, systems, and data:

Yes. Office Visio 2007 integrates with various Microsoft technologies:

Yes. You can send an open diagram from within Office Visio 2007 or simply attach a diagram to an e-mail message. For information on sending an open diagram from within Office Visio 2007, read How to Send a Visio Document in E-mail. If the e-mail recipient is using Office Outlook 2007, they can also preview the Visio diagram within Outlook 2007 like other graphic files attached to messages.

See the system requirements for Office Visio 2007.

As a Microsoft Office system application, Office Visio 2007 was designed with accessibility needs in mind. Office Visio 2007 contains features that make the software accessible to a wide range of users, including those who have limited dexterity, low vision, or other disabilities. It provides underlying support for compatibility with assistive technology and has built-in support for quickly and easily moving around in menus, toolbars, and performing tasks using only the keyboard. You also can customize your work area by adding, moving, and hiding toolbars and menus, and choosing color, size, and drawing page options. Find more information on the level of support Office Visio 2007 provides for accessibility.

Yes. With the digital ink features in Office Visio 2007, you can easily create hand-drawn shapes and insert handwritten notes in a diagram when reviewing it. Like other Office Visio 2007 shapes, you can copy, move, and resize ink shapes, as well as add them to custom stencils to make them available for other drawings. You can also use ink features with desktop and laptop computers by using the mouse.

No. There are currently no plans for Office Visio 2007 to provide any built-in support for rendering Visio diagrams on PDAs. However, you can save a Visio diagram as a Web page, and then view the Web page on a PDA.

Office Visio 2007 supports 21 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Find more information on the language-specific features on Office Visio 2007.

Yes. Using Office Visio 2007, you can save your diagrams in the PDF file format. To save in PDF file format, in the Save As Type list, choose PDF Document.

The latest information on Office Visio 2007 can be found at the Visio Office Online Center. Here you will find detailed product information, the latest articles on topics most requested by users, and links to resources including hands-on training, white papers, best practices, and more.

Visit Visio Courses to find online Visio training courses you can complete yourself. In addition, a global network of hundreds of Visio Solution Providers can assist customers with specific deployment, training, and customization assistance.

The public newsgroup for Visio is microsoft.public.visio.

Visit the Microsoft Office Visio Help and Support site for the latest troubleshooting information and technical articles on Office Visio 2007.

Visit Microsoft Office Visio Solutions. IT professionals can also download the Office Visio Resource Kit for IT Professionals. This kit includes great software products from Microsoft partners that complement the functionality Office Visio 2007 delivers to IT professionals.

Visit Work Essentials to find task-specific and role-specific information about Microsoft Office system products.

Office Visio 2007 includes templates and online tutorials, as well as custom partner solutions and training information to help you successfully complete a business process management effort.