Hello, welcome to this guide! Let's see all the most important and basic
features inside the newest Microsoft Visio Professional 2019!
Do not forget to check our YouTube channel and our official website for
more tutorials, extras, news, release dates and giveaways!
Microsoft Visio is a professional product used to build flowcharts,
diagrams, schematics and also custom drawings for academic and business
environment, in order to explain and represent content inside drawings.
In this video we get a general and complete overview on how to use Visio.
When opening Visio, its start-up page shows up: on the left you can
browse and reopen an existing Visio document; on the right you can pick
any ready template to start with a new drawing. Visio has several
ready templates available from basic flowcharts to layouts and diagrams.
To see how to use Visio let's start from a new empty page by going to
Blank Drawing. Choose whether to use the Metric or the US unit and go to
Create to open the document in the main Visio workspace. This has the
Ribbon on top, collecting all the tools and features inside Visio; the
Shapes panel on the left, with ready shapes available and the drawing
page where you drop and edit your objects.
Before starting drawing, make sure to set your page first, especially if
your work must be exported or printed once finished. Use the Page Setup
section under the Design tab to set the page Orientation and its Size
between several standard formats. You can go to More Page Sizes... to
define a custom one instead.
On Backgrounds you can also add any background or title on the page.
Once the page is ready, you can start drawing inside your document. This
is made by three main kinds of objects: the Shapes, the Connectors and
the pieces of Text. Shapes are simple objects like rectangles, circles,
lines but also complex ones like motors, buttons and icons showing topics
and representing subjects. The Connectors are wires and arrows connecting
shapes and showing relationship and dependence between these. Pieces of
Text are titles and annotations used to name or describe your objects.
Let's start with the Shapes.
To draw Shapes on your document you can either use the Shapes panel on the
left or the drawing tools inside the Home tab above.
The Shapes panel contains several ready templates to use inside
collections called Stencils, different in kind and topic. Inside More
Shapes, choose the Stencil interested and then drag and drop the template
from the list at the bottom to create a copy of such shape in your
document.
Whereas to create custom drawings you have to use the drawing tools
inside the Tools section above. You can drop rectangles, ellipses, lines,
arcs and also freehand drawings by clicking and dragging on your document.
You can also use the Pencil tool to draw lines, arcs or circles depending
on how you use your cursor.
In addition, with the options inside the Draw tab, you can draw freehand
traces especially when using any touch screen. Pay attention that these
kinds of drawings can't be customizable as the standard shapes we are going
to see.
To check your drawings in detail zoom in and out on your document by
holding down the CTRL key while using your mouse wheel.
Visio has several drawing aids to help you at drawing shapes. Under the
View tab you can hide and show Rulers, the page Grid and set all snappings
and guideline options inside the Snap & Glue panel. Snappings are used to
place your cursor directly on grid points, shape contours and vertices
when it is close enough. Guidelines are used to draw and align objects
through precise directions. You can ignore all these drawing aids by
holding down the ALT key.
Once the Shapes are placed, you can link and connect these together with
wires called Connectors. Enable the Connector tool and click and drag
from any green contour to create a wire from the actual shape to the next
one. On other shapes you can start the connection from defined anchors
called Connection Points, highlighted in green color.
You can adjust the Connectors by clicking and dragging from their blue
nodes and change their link by moving their endpoints.
All shapes created with ready templates do include connection points
and contours, but all the custom ones made with the drawing tools do not,
so it becomes hard to create connections with these unless you create
connection points first.
To add Connection Points, select the interested object and enable the
Connection Point tool from the Home tab. At this point, hold down the
CTRL key and click on specific points on the shape or outside it to add a
Connection Point, represented in pink color. You can also move these
points by clicking and dragging these directly. If these points already
hold connectors, these get updated as you move.
Once these points are made, you can easily snap to these and add your wire
connectors.
Now let's see how to manage and edit the Shapes and Connectors inside
your Visio document with the Pointer Tool inside the Home tab.
First of all select the object interested by clicking on it. This shows
several nodes you can use to rotate or scale the object by respecting or
not its aspect ratio. To move the object, click and drag it directly.
Visio will help you with several green guidelines in order to place and
align your object correctly. Remember that you can avoid any snapping or
guideline by holding down the ALT key. Whereas hold down the Shift key to
move horizontally or vertically.
In case you move any object outside the page margins, this will be
automatically extended if the Auto Size option under the Design tab is
ON.
You can cut, copy and paste a selected object by right-clicking on it.
To undo any bad action made inside your document just use CTRL+Z.
You can also customize freehand drawings by selecting these and enabling
the Freeform tool, using the blue nodes and handles to adjust the curves.
To adjust the appearance of your objects you have to use the Shape Styles
section under the Home tab. Use Fill to add and set the filling color;
Line to adjust the line color, style, weight and endpoints and Effects to
add special effects, such as shadows, reflection, bevel and more! For the
complete list of properties and options right-click on the object and go
to Format Shape.
You can also use quick templates for the overall document appearance
inside the Theme section under the Design tab.
In case of wire connectors, you can right-click on these to set them
Straight or Curved, adjusting these just like the freeform drawings.
To modify multiple objects together, select all of these first by holding
down the CTRL key and then edit all of these.
Text is added to describe or name the several shape you have built. With
the Text tool enabled, click and drag on the document to create a text
area which delimits the content you type inside. Then adjust the text
color, font, size, style and distribution under the Home tab. These
modifications are applied on the whole text unless you select just a piece
of it.
The piece of text created can be moved, scaled or rotated independently,
as seen for other objects before.
You can also create pieces of text linked to shapes, that follow the
object in case you move or edit it. With the Pointer Tool enabled,
double-click on an object to add text to it and use its yellow node to
place it correctly.
Once your custom Shapes are finished, you can save and collect these into
your own Stencils on the left in order to re-use them in other Visio
documents.
To create a new Stencil, go to More Shapes and then to New Stencil. Then,
select one or multiple objects and drag these into the new Stencil on the
left. Once imported you can right-click on the Shapes or on the Stencil
to rename and save these.
Inside Visio you can also import extra objects such as pictures, charts
and CAD drawings with the tools inside the Insert tab.
Use Pictures to browse and import a picture. You can move, scale and edit
it just like standard shapes. You can also use the Format tab above to
correct the photo Brightness and Contrast, add any outline with Line or
crop the picture with the Crop Tool.
Use Chart to import charts inside your document. You can fully edit and
customize these if you have Microsoft Excel installed.
Check out our video tutorial to discover how to edit charts with
Microsoft Excel!
Finally, let's see how to save and export your work from Visio!
To save your document go to File and then to Save As. Choose where to
save and also the format to use: .vsdx saves your work as a Visio
document in order to open and edit your drawings in the future; .png or
.jpg exports your whole document as a picture rendered in pixels; .pdf
saves all in a pdf document ready to be shared. Make sure not to have
any object selected while saving or all the rest of your document won't
be taken into account.
In addition, if you go to the Design tab and then to Fit to Drawing you
can resize your page to the content of your document. This is very good
since it optimizes the quality and the details of your drawings in case
you do not have to respect the standard page layouts.
To print your document, go to File and then to Print. On the left side
you can set all the print options, such as pages, orientation and page
size while checking the preview on the right side. As you can see, no
visual aids such as guidelines or grids are printed.
Thanks for watching this video! Make sure to check our channel to get more
and free video tutorials dedicated to Microsoft Office 2019!