The Microsoft Visio Viewer is a free download that lets anyone view Visio drawings without having Visio installed on their computer. If you have Visio, you can still benefit from the viewer because it allows you to preview drawings in both Outlook and the Windows Preview pane. We recommend that everyone with Windows 7 or Windows 8 download the latest viewer to get the best experience viewing drawings.

In this post, we explain the Microsoft Visio Viewer in more detail.

The new Visio will have three editions: Microsoft Visio Standard 2013, Microsoft Visio Professional 2013 and Microsoft Visio Pro for Office 365. Learn which edition of Visio is right for you.

The new Visio introduces a new XML-based file format, VSDX. In a previous post, we provided an overview of the new file format. One benefit of the new file format is its interoperability: it is now much easier to work with the default file format outside of Visio. In this post, we provide some tips for working with the new file format programmatically.

Database templates have a fresh, modern look in the new Visio. In our new approach, templates focus on the on-canvas experience, which makes them great for brainstorming, free-form diagramming and collaborating on ideas.

There are  four database templates:  Chen's, Crow's Foot, IDEF1X and UML. Each template can be used to model a database system in a different notation. We'll describe the components of a database diagram and then cover each of the notations.

Visio offers over 60 types of professional templates to build compelling diagrams, and organization charts are among most frequently created. Visio organization charts are simple and visual, but what if you want to connect them to key business indicators your organization is tracking, such as sales by region or department or budget by department, vacation status, training reports? Sometimes this information is located in another source such as Excel or  a complex database. Data-linked diagrams let you add data to Visio diagrams—no code required--and anyone in an organization can quickly create such dashboards to get better insights into data using Visio Professional 2013 or Visio Pro for Office 365.

Our previous posts have discussed some of the great end user features we’ve added to the new Visio. For developers, the new Visio supports programmatic access for many of its new features. The new Visio API contains methods that let developers change shapes and pictures, add comments, duplicate pages, and apply themes.

In this blog post, we will introduce some of the new API by providing brief descriptions about the methods, properties, and objects. We will also see some of them in action using examples.

The new Visio has a variety of improvements designed to make your diagramming experience easier and more fluid. Below is a list of 10 new ways you can be more efficient in the new Visio. Give them a try the next time you create a diagram and see how much time you save.

In a previous blog post, we introduced the new themes, variants, and styles feature in the new Visio. Not only does this feature make it easy and fast for users to create professional looking diagrams, it also fully supports programmatic access. This post will focus on how to use the new API methods to apply modern and vibrant looks to any diagram.

In a previous post, we showed you some of the rich shape effects that are now possible in the new Visio. These effects are great not only for adding visual impact and vibrancy to shapes, but also for presenting shape data in new and interesting ways.

With the new Visio you can quickly create modern looking, organized timelines that make it easy to order events and share information. Improvements we made across the product allow the new timelines to take on a variety of different looks to create beautiful, professional diagrams. Specifically, we made it easier to do the following tasks: apply themes, customize dates and elements, reposition shapes and switch between timeline styles

This blog post will walk through making a timeline to highlight the new features and demonstrate a few tricks and hints.