Shrinking Visio Pics in Word Doc

[fasteddy29]

Hi all,

I've created a Word Doc that has about 20-30 screenshots of Visio interfaces mockups.

The document has grown to a barely manageable size (140 mb.) and the majority of the issue is the Visio diagrams.

The issue with changing the Visio extensions to something else (.jpg, .bmp, etc.) is that the picture becomes fuzzy if the document size is increased.

This document is for a client, and they will need to open and close the document repeatedly, so I'd like to offer them something more manageable in size.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to shrink the Visio diagram sizes in the Word Doc?

Thanks,
Dan

[Paul Herber]

Have you tried saving the Visio pages as a .PDF document?

[saveenr]

Try using "Paste Special" and instead selecting "Enhanced Metafile". The file size should be much smaller. If you use this method remember to keep the original Visio document around in case you need to make edits to the mockups - after which you'll have to "paste special" again.

[wapperdude]

Another option would be to save as a png file.

[Yacine]

Hi Dan,
if you use the windows standard screenshot function, you'll get BMPs with some 3 to 9 Mb per image. That is  even for a single image too much.
The images don't become fuzzy, when the document size changes, but the pages size. This should not happen so often with word documents. Also it concerns only bitmap formats without lossfree compression - eg jpg. I guess that you made your trials with jpgs with a too high compression rate (80% or less file size). With 90-95% the results are still presentable.
As Wayne recommends PNG is also a very good alternative with lossfree compression.
There are many free screenshooters out there, use one of them.

Furthermore, you have the possibility to split a word document in several smaller ones and concatenate them in a central one.

PDFs, as Paul states, should be your first choice, whenever your customer don't need to edit your work. But careful, PDFs also compress the images and to my knowledge to jpg. So,check the printing settings.

[vojo]

I routinely...literally 100s of times have done this.   If you use simple shapes, it should not balloon anywhere near that (I did a 184 pg spac with probably 30 visio pictures = 8MB)
if you are using special shapes with lots of shape cells...that can balloon  well......visio drawing using shapes developed for IT = 16MB easily for one picture with hand full of my servers and networks

What I do is the following
   - Select shapes in visio to copy
   - hit copy
   - go to word doc and place cursor where you want image
   - hit paste
   - select visio in word doc...right click
   - set size as desired
   - set page attributes (center, options==>relative to line, etc)

graphics are crisp and you can go back into the drawing and word and edit it vision in situ.

[vojo]

for simple shapes....20K in visio...37K in word

[vojo]

I have found word explodes in size when you try to mess with a list.  May want to check that.
Also, as you just saw....if you have complex shapes....the word doc can get big.
doc1.vsd are complex isometric shapes I created.....doc2.vsd are just simple shapes via visio tools.

[Yacine]

Tried it out. The doc file is even smaller than the VSD.
Thank you Vojo.
----
Vojo, you were faster, than me. 
I tried it in W2007 and compressed the pasted image, as I understood, that is what you meant by "set size".

[iralevine]

One last tip on this now that you have file size issue solved.  I have to do this as well for my clients when i write procedure documents based on the process flows.  the challenge for me was always the way that word is not nearly as flexible in sizing and locating inserted images.  To overcome this and to size how I want, I create a table of 1X1 and then paste the image there.  the nice thing about that is you can set the size of the cell in the table to be the size you want the image to be.  so if you want a 4x6 image and centered on the page, just create the table with the dimensions and paste the image in the cell.

hope this helps.

Ira

[vojo]

fyi...I dont insert the drawing as a jpg or png....actually insert it as a visio drawing.

[fasteddy29]

Hey all,

Thank you so much for all the information.

I will let you know which way works best for me.

And, to the people that suggested PDF, yes, that will help, but our process here is to submit a Word Document first for some feedback and input from the client.

Again, thank you all so much for the info, and i'll let you know what works best for me, in the hopes that somebody else can utilize one of these tips in the future.

Stay tuned 

[fasteddy29]

Hi All,

Okay, here's what i've found so far......

I tried the copy and paste functionality, by selecting Paste Special in Word, and picking Picture - Enhanced Metafile

That saved me about 30 megs, which is great (thank you for that tip) but still leaves my document at 106 megs.

I have tried just using the Visio diagrams themselves in a Word Doc, for testing, but none of the other suggestions have made any difference in document size.

One thing i should mention is that these Visio Diagrams are very complex, with a large amount of fields and sections in them. They are being used for a software project (I'm a Business Analyst) to show the user interfaces for the system.

[Yacine]

We just decided, that there is only one best way: Vojo's in Ira's table. Basta.

this one could have been from Wayne. isn't it? How close did I get?