Saving Visio Diagrams as Metafiles Within Word Documents
One of the most common questions that I get involves how to paste Visio diagrams into Word without bloating the diagram size. When you cut and paste a Visio diagram into another Office diagram, you are putting an OLE object in your document. Because you are running the Visio process within the Office document, your Office document is going to get considerably bigger. The benefit of using OLE embedded objects lie in the ability for the user to edit the Visio drawing in the Office document.
If you don't care about editing your diagram in the document, I'd strongly suggest you use Paste Special to transform the Visio diagram into a nice, small metafile for your document. Here's how it works:
1. Copy all or select and copy part of your diagram
2. In Word, go to the Edit menu. Right below the Paste entry is Paste Special. Click Paste Special.
3. Select whatever format (other than Visio diagram) that you want to convert your diagram into.
Your Visio diagram will be converted on the spot into a metafile in your Word document. You get your visuals without bloating your document.
Mai-lan
