A .vsd or .vsdx file is a Microsoft Visio diagram: a flowchart, an org chart, a network or floor plan, a process map. Visio is sold separately from Microsoft Office, so most people who are sent one, and everyone on a Mac or a Chromebook, have nothing that opens it. The usual answers are a free trial, an online converter that uploads the file, or asking whoever sent it for a PDF.
This page reads the file with libvisio, the open-source Visio reader LibreOffice uses, compiled to run in your browser, and draws every page with its shapes, connectors, text and pictures. Each page is shown under the name it has in Visio. Search the text across all the pages, copy it, save the whole diagram as a PDF, or save a page as a PNG or an SVG that keeps its shapes sharp at any size. Visio stencils open as a grid of their shapes, and templates open like drawings. The file is never uploaded. It is free to use, with no account and no upload limit, and it runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and while the page stays open, a feature you have already used keeps working offline.
- Can I edit the diagram here?
- No, this is a viewer. To edit a Visio file without Visio, LibreOffice Draw (free, on Windows, Mac and Linux) opens .vsd and .vsdx files with the same reader as this page, and can save them as its own drawings or as PDF. The SVG of a page saved here also opens in vector editors such as Inkscape.
- Will the diagram look exactly as it does in Visio?
- Very close for most diagrams: shapes, lines, connectors, arrows, colours, text and pictures are all drawn. Text is drawn with the fonts on your computer, so a font you do not have is replaced by a similar one and lines of text can wrap slightly differently. Some effects Visio adds, such as glows, soft edges and 3-D bevels, are not drawn, and pictures stored as Windows metafiles (WMF or EMF) are shown as labelled boxes.
- What is a stencil, and what happens when I open one?
- A stencil (.vss or .vssx) is a set of shapes, called masters, that Visio users drag onto their drawings: network equipment, office furniture, flowchart symbols. Opened here, a stencil shows every master as a tile with its name, which is a quick way to see what a stencil contains. Each tile can be saved as a PNG or SVG.
- Which versions of Visio are supported?
- Files from Visio 5 (1998) onwards: the binary .vsd format up to Visio 2010, the XML .vdx format of Visio 2003 to 2010, and the .vsdx package format of Visio 2013 and later, including Visio for the web and Visio 365. Files from Visio 4 and earlier are not read.
- Is the Visio file uploaded?
- No. The file is read and drawn by your browser on your computer. That matters for exactly the diagrams people keep in Visio: network layouts, building plans and organisation charts.