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You are here: Home / Visio / Visio 2013 / Visio Map of the World

Published on August 16, 2013 by David Parker

Visio Map of the World

I have often wanted a Visio map of the world, with countries that can be linked to data. There are a number of Visio country shapes that are available for download on the internet, but they are fairly old, and certainly don’t have an up to date world. For example, South Sudan is currently the newest country in the world (2011), though a lot of resources on the web don’t show it. So, I was relieved to find a good SVG world map at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BlankMap-FlatWorld6.svg?uselang=en-gb . Even better was that each of the shapes are named with the ISO2 code. This meant that I could use Link Data to Shapes to automatically create Shape Data from an Excel worksheet that I put together from various sources.

image

Note that I had to add Kosovo manually, since it was not on the original map, as it’s status as a country is in dispute. The ISO codes have apparently been temporarily assigned.

The advantage of having this map available in Visio as separate countries, means that it can be used for a variety of reasons, and can be linked to other data sources easily. For example, I have simply added an extra data link to an Excel worksheet that contained a list of the countries where the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development ( http://www.ebrd.com ) operates.

image

You can download the world map from BlankWorld.vsdx (Visio 2013) and BlankWorld.vsd (Visio 2003-10)

UPDATE : http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/01/27/visio-map-of-the-world-update

Related

Filed Under: Geographic, Visio 2013 Tagged With: Shape Data

About David Parker

David Parker has 25 years' experience of providing data visualization solutions to companies around the globe. He is a Microsoft MVP and Visio expert.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rachel says

    September 14, 2013 at 5:14 pm

    unfortunately – the file wont open in viso – it says theres an error/corupt

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      November 29, 2013 at 9:22 am

      Which version of Visio are you using?
      This was made with Visio 2013, so you might be trying to open with an earlier version.

      Reply
      • Nick says

        May 1, 2014 at 8:03 pm

        It works for me. Question: How do we open the external data view?

        Reply
        • davidjpp says

          May 6, 2014 at 9:56 am

          If you have at least Visio Professional, then Data | Show/Hide | Show Data Window

          Reply
  2. Rachel says

    September 14, 2013 at 5:17 pm

    I was really looking forward to this file, unfortunately on download – it says it’s corupt. 🙁

    Reply
    • Rachel says

      September 16, 2013 at 7:08 pm

      I also tried to use the same source svg file. I couldn’t figure out how to get visio (2010 Professional) to map in the ISO 2 codes in the SVG file to the shapes – I tried looking through developer mode without much luck. (I’m a newbie to visio) any advice/pointers?

      Reply
  3. Geo says

    January 23, 2014 at 11:50 am

    mh, teh download dos not work 🙁

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      January 27, 2014 at 9:12 am

      Are you trying to download the Visio 2010 or Visio 2013 version?
      They both work for me.

      Reply
  4. Private says

    January 24, 2014 at 1:41 pm

    Hi how can I change the data so that the countries change colour depending on the rep responsible for that sales region?

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      January 27, 2014 at 9:08 am

      If you have another worksheet with a column for any of the country codes and one for the sales reps. name, then you can add the Sales Reps name to each shape using Link Data to Shapes and Automatically link using the country code as the key. You can then use Color By Value by the Sales Reps name, and add a legend. See http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/01/27/visio-map-of-the-world-update/ for an example.

      Reply
  5. Tama says

    January 25, 2014 at 7:46 am

    Thank you for making the diagram available. I’m looking to use this as a base to display user numbers globally broken down by timezone/city or state and graphically display as dot with a label. Any guidance you would be appreciated.

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      January 27, 2014 at 9:10 am

      My map only goes down to country level, but you can do similar with other levels, if you can find vector files to convert, such as SVG.. I have updated nmy original map to make adding labels easier, see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/01/27/visio-map-of-the-world-update/ for an example.

      Reply
      • Tama says

        January 30, 2014 at 8:16 pm

        Hi David thanks for the reply and taking the time to create the new article and updated diagram, really helpful

        Reply
  6. Chris says

    April 11, 2014 at 6:00 pm

    Good day, I’ve download the BlankMap provided by the link in your post. When I try and open it in Visio 2007 I get a msg,”The file was opened but some problems were encountered. Details of the problems were added to the log file.”. I’m not sure what to do to fix this error.

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      April 11, 2014 at 6:12 pm

      That is because it is a Visio 2013 document. Here is a link for a Visio 2003-2010 version, http://1drv.ms/1kBO8kX, that I have just created for you.

      Reply
  7. aversier says

    November 18, 2014 at 9:28 am

    in 2010 version i cant see all of the continents, for example australia and americas.

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      November 18, 2014 at 11:02 am

      Well, I just tried it using Visio 2010, and it seemed OK to me. It is a 5 mb file in 2010, so could you have run out of memory?

      Reply
  8. Daniel says

    June 25, 2015 at 11:16 am

    Hey guys, I read that some of you have problems opening the files. I endeavoured the same situation after downloading the file. But take a close look at the file extension and you will see the problem that visio has: BlankWorld.vsd.vdx

    The author put a double extension on at least one of the files. You just have to delete the .vdx and leave it as BlankWorld.vsd and the file will open without problems. Hope that comment helps some of you!

    Reply
  9. Amol says

    October 8, 2016 at 12:54 pm

    thnks a lot for the help by placing this visio file
    this is helped me a lot

    Reply
  10. Anon says

    June 29, 2017 at 4:37 pm

    Amazing!!! Thank you so much for your Templates, i wish you all the best and just 3 Thank you’s more! 🙂

    Reply
  11. Makis says

    October 6, 2017 at 8:22 am

    The links are dead 🙁

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      October 6, 2017 at 8:43 am

      Which links? I just tried all of them and they worked for me….

      Reply
  12. Алина says

    February 7, 2019 at 7:22 am

    Подскажите пожалуйста можно ли вставить в VISIO карту отдельного государства с городами. Если можно, то как это сделать? Буду очень признательна. Для работы очень нужно!

    Reply
    • davidjpp says

      February 7, 2019 at 7:29 am

      Check out the bottom of Chris’s article at : http://www.visguy.com/2007/04/23/map-of-world/
      And mine at : https://blog.bvisual.net/2015/05/27/distributing-data-points-automatically-on-maps-in-visio/

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Visio Map of the World Update | bVisual says:
    January 27, 2014 at 8:42 am

    […] earlier post about the world in Visio shapes, see http://blog.bvisual.net/2013/08/16/visio-map-of-the-world/ , has been one of my most popular, and a reader recently asked about changing the colour of […]

    Reply

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