Open a Visio drawing (.vsdx) without Visio
Someone sent you a network diagram, floor plan or flowchart as a .vsdx, and you have no Visio licence, or you are on a Mac, a Chromebook or a phone. Drop the file here: every page is drawn with its shapes, connectors, text and pictures; you can zoom in, search the text on every page, read each shape's data fields, and save a page as SVG or PNG.
The file is read on your device. It is not uploaded, its links are not followed and its macros are never run.
What it shows
- Every page, drawn. One tab per page, each drawn as sharp vector graphics from the shapes' own outlines: lines, arcs, curves and ellipses, at their position, size, rotation and mirroring. A page that uses a background page (a title block, a border) is drawn on top of it.
- Shapes from stencils. A shape dragged from a stencil stores only what changed; the rest (its outline, its colours, often its text) lives in a master shape inside the file. Those are looked up and combined the way Visio does, cell by cell, so a server icon or a flowchart decision diamond looks like itself.
- Lines, fills, text and arrows. Line thickness, colour and dash pattern, fill colour, each shape's text in its text block (wrapped to the block's width), connectors from their start to their end with arrowheads, grouped shapes, and pictures pasted into the drawing (PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP).
- Zoom and move. Drag to move around, pinch or scroll to zoom, and Fit to see the whole page; the smallest label on a crowded rack diagram can be zoomed until it is readable on a phone.
- Search every page. Type a word, a host name or an IP address: every shape whose text, name or data contains it is listed with its page, and tapping one jumps there and outlines the shape.
- Shape data and links. Tap a shape in the list or on the drawing to see its text, its master's name and its shape data (the fields Visio shows in the Shape Data window, such as a server's asset tag or a room's area). Hyperlinks are listed as text; nothing is opened.
- Document properties. Title, author, company, the created, modified and last-printed dates, the template it was started from and the Visio version that saved it.
- Save. The current page as an SVG (sized in inches, so it prints at the drawing's size, and opens in Inkscape, Illustrator or a browser) or a PNG at twice screen resolution, and every page's text as one .txt file.
What is inside a .vsdx file
Since Visio 2013, a drawing is a ZIP archive of XML files (the same Open Packaging Conventions as .docx and .xlsx), which is why the file starts with PK. visio/pages/pages.xml lists the pages with their sizes, each visio/pages/pageN.xml holds that page's shapes, visio/masters/ holds the master shapes from the stencils that were used, visio/document.xml holds the styles and colours, and pictures sit in visio/media/.
A shape is a list of named cells, like a tiny spreadsheet: PinX and PinY place it on the page, Width, Height and Angle size and turn it, LineColor and FillForegnd colour it, and Geometry sections draw its outline row by row (MoveTo, LineTo, ArcTo and so on). Lengths are stored in inches, even in a metric drawing, and angles in radians. A cell missing from a shape comes from its master shape, then from its style; this page follows that chain. For example, a Pentagon dragged from Basic Shapes and stretched to 3 inches wide stores its new width and its stretched corner points, while its line weight still comes from the master.
The .vsdm form adds VBA macros (never run here), .vstx is a template and .vssx a stencil, a file of master shapes without pages; this page lists a stencil's masters but has no page to draw.
What this cannot do
- Open the old .vsd format. Visio 2003 to 2010 saved drawings in a binary format inside a Microsoft compound file. It is recognised and named here but not drawn. LibreOffice Draw (free, on Windows, Mac and Linux) opens a .vsd; save it there as .vsdx and it opens here.
- Draw themes and effects exactly. Visio 2013 themes, gradients, fill patterns, shadows, glows and 3-D bevels are reduced to the shape's plain line and fill colours. Each arrowhead is drawn as a filled triangle of the right size, whatever its style in Visio. Text uses the drawing's font name if your device has it, otherwise a similar sans-serif, and is wrapped by an estimate, so a long label can break onto lines at slightly different places than in Visio.
- Draw every curve exactly. NURBS curves (free-form curves, common in some stencils) are drawn through their control points, and splines through their knots, so those outlines are close but not exact; the page says when a drawing has them. Arcs, ellipses and Bézier curves are exact.
- Show Windows metafile pictures. Icons pasted as EMF or WMF (common in older network-diagram stencils) cannot be drawn by a browser. They are shown as a grey box of the right size and counted under the page.
- Recalculate formulas. Visio stores every cell's last calculated value next to its formula, and those values are what is drawn. Formulas are not run, so a shape whose value depends on another shape that was later changed outside Visio shows what Visio last saved.
- Edit, or switch layers. It only reads: there is no editing and no layer toggle. Every shape on every layer is drawn.