Introducing Microsoft Visio Import !!!

Visio import has been the elephant in the corner of our room for a while. We are super excited to announce that Creately now supports importing and editing of Visio diagrams and Stencils.

This means that you can easily transition your legacy work into Creately and start collaborating and working effectively right away. Imported Visio diagrams become Creately shapes that you can reuse, edit and change as you please.

We’ve been working on this for a while, painstakingly working through the MS Visio file formats, testing thousands and thousands of Visio diagrams and shapes making sure that things go really well for all of our customers from the get go. While we’ve tried our best to cover all possible scenarios, there may be the occasional file that trips up Creately, so do let us know if you run into any issues.

Importing Visio files is quite straight forward

  • Log in to Creately and go to the app
  • Create a new document or open an existing one
  • Click import and in the drop down select “Import Visio File
  • Choose a Visio file from your computer or give a web location
  • Click import and wait for the magic to happen

At the moment we support importing of. vdf (diagrams), .vtx (Visio templates), .vsx (Visio stencils)  and SVG files.

Support for other Visio file types like .vsdx and .vssx will be added to Visio import in the near future. For the moment you can open them in Visio, save them as .vdf or .vsx and import them to Creately.

No hassle Visio import by Creately

Easily import Visio files into Creately

Imported Visio diagrams shapes appear in the left side panel of Creately allowing you to reuse the same shapes inside the diagram diagram to edit and improve the imported Visio document.

More Resources

Visio for Mac OS 

Visio Alternative Online

Your Thoughts on the Visio Import?

This is a major milestone for us and we wont your feedback to make it even better. So start importing your Visio files to Creately and let us know what you think of the process.

Did the diagrams come out correctly? Had trouble with the import process? Absolutely Loved it? Your feedback is what keeps us going and help us improve. So drop a mail to support@creately.com and let us know what you think.

We are really excited to open our doors to countless Visio users previously trapped in the file format. We’d love to see what you create with Creately!

Download our all-new eBook for tips on 50 powerful Business Diagrams for Strategic Planning.

Author

Nishadha

Software engineer turned tech evangelist. I handle marketing stuff here at Creately including writing blog posts and handling social media accounts. In my spare time, I love to read and travel.

Comments

  1. Evan

    When will you support import for Visio 2016? I just purchased the license today and then realized Creately import does not even support Visio 2013 diagram. So disappointed 🙁

  2. Jon

    Any update on importing Visio stencil file types? Almost every network diagram stencil file from just about any vendor is still a *.vss file. (At least all my older ones are). This is a great app and I hope one day it will import the stencils I use the most.

    • Hi Jon,
      Thanks for your feedback. We’re have plans to add support for the latest stencil file types but don’t have a definite date yet.

  3. Anthony Wijnen

    I’m having the same issues as @RaymonPage. Can you please elaborate on the current status of visio import support. Which file extensions are supported exactly and for which files sizes? Is there really a hard limit at 10MB? It seems that way, and that would be an absolute deal breaker for us.

    What about improved support in the pipeline? When can we expect to be able to import Visio 2013 .vsdx files?

    Thanks in advance.
    Anthony

    • Hi Anthony,
      Currently the supported files are vdx, vtx and vsx files. Although we hope to support .vsdx files there is no fixed timeline for that. We are looking for way to remove the 10MB limit but for the moment the 10MB limit is there.

      • Rob

        Hi Nishadha, any news on 10Mb limit? Deal breaker for me too….:-( Rob

  4. Raymond Page

    I tried to import multiple Visio drawings using .vdx, .vsx, .vtx and .svg, but all failed to correctly import. Most of the drawings were complex, but the import even missed formatting and color on some simple drawings. I use Creately at home, but I work for a relatively large company with a lot of artifacts, so transitioning to Creately is not really an option if it does not completely support Visio drawings. Are any solutions on the horizon? Also, is the version of Creately for Confluence any different in terms of importing Visio?

  5. Cristina

    Hi Nishadha!
    How could I import files from Visio/2013? As I checked on Microsoft page, this new version doesn’t allow to save .vdx files (or the other options) and just save .vsd files (or .vsdx files)… I´m trying to save time importing my Visio files on Creately (in Confluence) and so far it has been an impossible task…
    Please let me know if it is possible 🙂

    • Nishadha

      Hi Cristina,
      At the moment we don’t support the .vsdx and the other new file types of Visio 2013. One workaround you can try is save it as a SVG file and then import it to Creately.
      We’re extremely sorry about the situation and we’re working hard to add support to these file types in a future release.

  6. Willie Nel

    Hi – Tried it – and it failed miserably – we were trying to import a simple organisation chart form the .vsx format and all color information was lost?

    Seems not to happen with other visio diagrams – but we next tried a simply visio pie chart, and this time all text information (percentages per pie slice) was lost.

    So – keep at it – but the importing will have to improve before it is actually completely useful and does not result in significant rework
    once imported

    • Nishadha

      Hi Willie,
      Thanks for trying it out and leaving the feedback. Is it possible to send us the Visio files you were trying to import? That would be a great help for us to further improve this feature.
      Sorry about the inconvenience and again thanks for the feedback.
      P.S – If the diagrams contain sensitive private data you can remove them and send the .vsx files.

  7. Eric

    Actually no. vdx,vtx and vsx are what most collegues use. My question is can I create/modify in Creately and then save it to a vdx,vtx and vsx format? Thanks.

    • Nishadha

      Hi Eric,
      Currently we don’t support exporting as Visio files. What you can do is export it as a SVG file, which can be opened using Visio and many other diagram editors.

  8. Eric

    I work with dinosaurs all the time. They will not let go of thier Visio espescially due to the cost they’ve put into it already. Can I save files in a format readable by the newer versions of Visio?

    • Nishadha

      Hi Eric,
      We’re supporting vdx,vtx and vsx formats. Are you talking about the Visio 2013 file formats? We don’t support them yet.

  9. Kim

    Yes – I too am hoping to import a .vsd file
    please let us know when this will be possible!

    thanks
    Kim

  10. Graham

    Great progress!
    I’ve been using Visio on and off for over 15 years, so I have a lot of old diagrams and stencils, and all are now in Visio 2000 format – .vsd and .vss files. Visio 2000 cannot save as .vdx, etc. Can you say when Creately will be able to import these older formats? (I’m not concerned about exporting to Visio formats, as I will be happy to abandon it and move everything to Creately for the future.)
    Thanks.

    • Nishadha

      Hi Graham,
      There are no specific plans yet. But I’ll let the developer team know that there is interest for them.

      • Vernon

        I started my account and it is not letting me import a visio file.
        the vsdx and vstx files are grayed out when I try to select them

  11. Paul

    Hi Clint,
    Great post!
    I know Visio import, but I’m interested in learning.

  12. Nishadha

    Hi Clint,
    Great that you found in interesting. If you’re using Creately extensively check out our Facebook page for a chance to win 1 year of Creately for free.

  13. Excellent news Creately Team and our team is ‘super excited’ too:)

    ~Clint
    @cazoomi

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