opening Visio 2007 stencil in Visio 2003 instance

[vojo]

Anybody know if you can open a visio stencil that supports only 2007 in visio 2003.
I am ok if some 2007 functions dont work....more interested if I can even open it to see what is there

[Paul Herber]

Yes. They are the same format.

[vojo]

Well...actually it does not work.   gives blank drawing and renames the entity to *.vsd
(ie 2007 templates and stencils become blank 2003 drawings)

Nice feature

[Visio Guy]

I have had a lot of weird behavior opening stencils by double-clicking on them in Explorer. I wonder if there's something related going on? I haven't had time to properly isolate the bug...

But Paul is right about 2003 and 2007 having the same format. Visio 2003 will just ignore stuff, but shouldn't choke on 2007-only data.

[vojo]

downloaded stencils/templates from microsoft to my local system (intrigued by the new 2007 education stencils).  0 for 3 opened in any meaningful form (no shapes, no actual stencils, etc)

[Paul Herber]

How are you opening the stencils?
Double-clicking or via menu File -> Shapes ? or what?

[vojo]

full package is fine
individual packages still have a problem (for me at least)

[wapperdude]

This isn't a solution, just an FYI, since I know Vojo has had a problem with these stencils.  The process that I went thru was to click the link to go to the download site, downloaded the zip file for all stencils, unzipped to a directory I named Educational, under My Documents>My Shapes.  Then if I double-click any stencil, the stencil window opens.  If Visio is running, then the stencil loads into Visio.  If I'm in Visio, go to Shapes Icon > My Shapes > Educational and click any stencil listed it opens.

Anyway, this was intended just as a point of reference, nothing else.