Microsoft Visio 2010 : Sharing and Publishing Diagrams - Creating Graphics

On the File tab, click Save As.

Note:

You can also open the Save As dialog box by pressing Alt+F, A.

In the File name field, type Not quite full page.

Click the Save as type arrow to display the list of file formats in which you can save all or part of a Visio drawing. The list includes the image file types mentioned in the list prior to this exercise, along with additional file types that will be discussed in subsequent exercises.

Tip:

Visio uses a standard Windows Save As dialog box. Although it is not shown in the following graphic, in the upper part of the dialog box, you can change the folder in which the image file will be saved. The default save location is the same folder that contains the Visio drawing.

Click JPEG File Interchange Format, and then click Save. The JPG Output Options dialog box opens.

For most situations you can accept all default settings by clicking OK. However, if you require a specific JPG file format that differs from the defaults shown in the previous graphic, use the various drop-down lists, text boxes, and options to satisfy your needs.

Click OK.

Open the Not quite full page image in any image viewing program. On most systems, you can do this by double-clicking the file name in Windows Explorer.

You can see that the image created by Visio does not include the full drawing page, but rather is just big enough to contain all of the shapes on the page. The image barely includes the vertical lines at the left and right edges and stops at the top of the page title and at the bottom of the document shape beneath the Hire employee shape. As noted in the text before this exercise, this is normal Visio behavior when creating image files.

Tip:

If you want to create an image of an entire Visio drawing page, you must place one or more shapes at the page boundaries to force Visio to capture the entire page. The easiest techniques for accomplishing this are to: 1) draw a rectangle with no fill at the page margins, effectively creating a border around the page; or 2) place a pair of very small shapes in opposite corners of the page.

If you use the first technique, you can make the line nearly invisible by making it very thin and/or giving it a color that is almost the same as the page background. If you use the second method, you can make the small shapes nearly invisible by making them very, very tiny or by making their fill color nearly that same as the page background. In either case, do not use a color that is exactly the same as the page background. If your shapes and the background are the same color, Visio will not “see” your added shapes and will not include them, so you will fail to capture the full page.

Next you will create a PNG image of a portion of the Visio recruiting diagram.

Use a bounding box to select the Hiring need reported, Log hiring request, and Prepare job description and screening questions shapes. Include the database and document shapes below the latter two shapes.

On the File tab, click Save As.

In the File name field, type Process shapes.

In the Save as type list, click Portable Network Graphics, and then click Save.

The PNG Output Options dialog box opens.

As with JPEG images, you should be able to accept the default settings for PNG images unless you have specific requirements that mandate other settings.

Click OK in the PNG Output Options dialog box to create the PNG file.

Open the Process shapes image in any image viewing program.

Notice that this image of a set of selected shapes exhibits the same behavior you saw when you created an image that contained all of the shapes on the page: the image is exactly as large as the set of shapes. If you require white space at the outside edges of your image, you will need to use one of the techniques described in the tip after Step 6.