Visio from Powerpoint

[Elaine]

At somepoint - somehow a lot of visio files I had on a shared drive seemed to have become powerpoint slides and now we can't edit in visio - does anyone know how this may have happened and is it possible to easily get these org charts back into visio?  They show a Visio icon but open in Powerpoint.....help!?!?

[Visio Guy]

Hi Elaine,

Are you talking about actual files in Explorer or objects embedded in PowerPoint slides?

Your file-type association might have simply gotten messed up. Try right-clicking on the file, then choose Open With > Choose Program... you should be able to browse for the Visio application, and I think there is a check-box to set Visio as the default.

A re-install or repair-install of Visio might help as well.

[Elaine]

That didn't work, I think...... to answer your question....it's files in explorer that look as if they are Visio (the icon) but they open as Powerpoint.  We're thinking that possibly other staff in the office have opened these as powerpoint since they didn't have visio and just did a save....possibly?  We can edit them in powerpoint but it would be much easier if we could edit them in visio.

[wapperdude]

It seems quite unlikely that PowerPoint could open a Visio file, at least, not as the initiating app.  You should get an error message once PowerPoint opens, indicating that the Visio file failed to open.  This is not the same as opening a Visio file from within PP.  If PP contains a Visio file or drawing then, that object should open via Visio.  It is possible that someone messed with the file, saved it as PP, then renamed it so that it had a .vsd suffix.  In Explorer, it would look like a Visio icon, but, if the file properties indicate it should open using PP, then, it will be happy.  Since you indicate that the file opens with PP, then I suspect it is not really a Visio file any more.

Couple things to explore: 
1.)  Per Visio Guy's suggestion, using Windows Explorer, navigate to the file in question, right click, select properties.  That will show the full name of the file, including the file extension type, and also which program opens it.  If it says vsd, then, it thinks your file is a Visio file.  That may not, in fact, be true.  If it says open with PP, and that works, then the file is really a PP file.
2.) Either click on the file, and select Open With per Visio Guys recommendation, or launch Visio, select File > Open, go to the location of your file, list all file types, and then double click on your file and see if Visio opens it.  This step probably fails since the file opened with PP.  You can try...

using the Windows search feature, and search for your file, by name, without any file extensions, and see if there might be more than one listing of the file with a .vsd extenstion. 

Hope this helps.
Wapperdude


PS:  I just re-read this.  My apologies, it was very poorly written.     Guess, I was one cup of coffee short of being coherent.   
PSS:  Can't stand it  , so I corrected the post.  Ugh! 

[vojo]

I do this all the time....10 times today alone...I use 2003
right click shape in ppt....select open visio (for new window) or edit (for inplace window on ppt).
The only caveat is that if you do alot of changes to a big image, PPT may run out of memory and
default to a less than slick presentation.    So for minor changes, its fine....for anything major
(X MB drawing for example) start with visio first than copy/paste.  

works fine for Word as well.

Now uselesstoys 3.1...uh, I mean openoffice 3.1...they dont even know how to spell line let alone
actually do anything with shapes or Visio.   Draw is for my 5 yr old to play with.  
That is a shear travesty of a tool suite!!!!