how do i import a word doc into Visio?

[piersonal]

Having gone through the first (and most highly rated) Visio course 'Get to
know Visio', the Brainstorming diagrams page has a tip 'You can also import a
Word outline into Visio as a brainstorming diagram, or export a Visio
brainstorming diagram as a Word outline, which makes it easy to repurpose
your work.'

However I can't seem to make this work. The only link I can find is the
Brainstoming Import facility that expects to see xml. However when you save a
word document to xml, Visio tells me that the '... import file does not
contain a recognised schema'. Does this mean that Word doesn't export to xml
correctly or that Visio can't read it?

Does anyone know please??

 

[Al Edlund]

the brainstorming transformation between the tools is based on an
application that goes one way only. The basic problem is that the two
implementations use different xml schemas. You might be able to get it to
work with a little research and an xslt.
al

 

[piersonal]

Hi Al - not sure what this means to be honest. I did assume that Word and
Visio would be compatible on all fronts, including formats of any kind. I
have tried to look into this and keep drawing up a blank, hence posting this
question. Happy to look at this xslt option although have no idea what it is
or how to create it or how complicated it would be. It does seem all in all
that this is anything but 'easy to repurpose'

 

[Al Edlund]

The way the brainstorm import/export works (based on some observation) is
that the visio drawing takes it's 'picture' and converts it to xml in a
format that looks to Word like an outline document. That's why Word can play
with it. Visio allows you to import xml to the brainstorming application but
it must be in a format (a schema) that it can work with. This means that the
Word document would have be changed to a 'schema' that Visio can understand,
that's where the transformation style sheet (xslt) comes in.
al

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

Not exactly user-friendly is it? Hopefully we can do a better job of Office
integration in the future.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Al Edlund]

well it does assume a certain amount of skills in something that to many
might be considered esoteric. The fact that the new office is based a lot on
xml should ease some of this.
al