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Does Adobe Acrobat make better PDF files from Visio?

An export to PDF utility was freely available for Visio 2007, and was built in to Visio 2010. However, I have always been disappointed by the lack of support for Visio layers, Shape Data and multiple hyperlinks per shape in the PDF output. Microsoft have always told me that this is because they have limited control over the public PDF format, as opposed to the proprietary Adobe PDF format (These features are also surprisingly missing from the export to XPS tool, even though this format originated from Microsoft). So, the question is, does Adobe Acrobat make better PDF files from Visio than Microsoft’s free tool?

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Visio 2013 File Formats

Visio 2013 has (at last) brought us the Metro file format, otherwise known as Open Packaging Conventions (OPC) standard (ISO 29500, Part 2)! You can read about Open Packaging Conventions Fundamentals at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd742818(v=vs.85).aspx.

Visio file formats were unchanged for versions 2003, 2007 and 2010, except that Visio 2010 saw the addition of the *.vdw format, which is basically the *.vsd with a XAML overlay added. There were two choices of file formats – the Visio binary format or the verbose DataDiagramML Xml format.

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Multiple Selection Methods for Visio Diagrams

Much as I love using Visio, I have always felt that there are a few selection methods missing, and I often have to some extra buttons into solutions to make up for this. There are many types of diagrams that have shapes connected to each other, usually with a connector shape, and the user needs to be able to traverse these connections quickly and easily, so I have created a Visio 2010 add-in, multiSelect, that adds a lot of different selection methods that are accessible via an extra ribbon tab when ever a shape is selected.

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Visio 2013 Consumer Preview Released

So, we can now all talk about Microsoft Office 2013, and, in particular, Visio 2013! Read about it at http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Preview/visio-benefits.aspx and find resources at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161226 . As a Visio MVP, I am delighted to see some of the exciting new capabilities. Of course, there are some tremendous visual enahancements, but the really big thing for me is the adoption of the Metro file format.
The Metro file format is the zipped-up, multi-part xml format used by Word, Excel and PowerPoint for several years already, but Visio missed out on this in the 2010 version, probably because so much effort was required to implement the FluentUI (Ribbon).
It may seem a small change, especially since Visio already had an XML format, but this new file format opens up so much more possibilities! One immediate benefit is the tighter integration with SharePoint … no more need to save into Visio Web Drawing format! Other benefits include Duplicate Page, Change Shape and Co-authoring … All of these must have been much easier to implement with the new Metro format. I’ll be blogging more about Visio 2013 in the future, but now I need to go explore …

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Selecting Nodes in Visio PivotDiagrams

Microsoft Visio 2007 introduced PivotDiagrams to Visio Professional, and continues unchanged in Visio 2010 (see http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio-help/create-a-pivotdiagram-HA010357089.aspx ). These diagrams are a great way to analyse and visualize data by allowing you to breakdown data in a similar manner to PivotTables and PivotCharts in Excel. Any one who has both Microsoft Project and Visio installed will have seen that all of the extra diagram reports are in fact Visio PivotDiagrams. However, I have always found that selecting the nodes you want is difficult. In this article I will explain the problem and provide a solution … a new free add-in called PdSelect.

Update : Added new features 20 Jul 2012

In the following example PivotDiagram, I used the built-in OrgData Excel workbook as the data source. This example workbook is normally used to demonstrate the OrgChart Wizard, but I have used it to provide an alternative breakdown by Department / Reports_To / Name.

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Automating Page.DropLegend in Visio 2010

Visio 2007 introduced Data Graphics but, in my opinion, didn’t provide any automatic legends for the icons and colour by value options. That is why I wrote DataLegends (see http://www.bvisual.net/Products/DataLegends.aspx ) as an add-in for Visio 2007 several years ago. This oversight was remedied in Visio 2010 when Microsoft introduced their own legends (which were not totally dissimilar to my own), and also added a method (Page.DropLegend) for programmers to automate this task.

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