Create Links to Office Documents

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About this lesson

In this module, you will learn how you can link your Visio diagrams to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. You will learn how you can link content from Word, PowerPoint, and Excel back into Visio.

Quick reference

Instructions

To link to a Visio diagram from an Office document (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook):

  1. Click on a blank space on the Visio diagram, so that nothing is selected, then click on the Home Menu, then click on Copy.
  2. Switch to your Office document (in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Outlook). Click on the Home Menu, click on the pulldown where it says Paste, then click on Paste Special. On the Paste Special window, click on Paste Link, then click on OK.

To copy something from an Office document into your Visio diagram, follow the same steps: copy something from either Word, PowerPoint, Excel, or Outlook, and then use the Paste Special/Paste Link feature in Visio.

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  • 00:03 You're going to find that Visio interacts very
  • 00:07 well with the other Office 365 programs.
  • 00:11 So let's say I want this diagram to be placed in
  • 00:16 an Excel document or a Word document or a PowerPoint, or even Outlook.
  • 00:21 So I'm going to right click on the diagram here in Visio, and we'll pick on Copy.
  • 00:26 Then I'm going to go into PowerPoint for this example, so let's say we go into
  • 00:32 PowerPoint into a new presentation or it could be an existing presentation as well.
  • 00:37 Now these steps will work in Word or PowerPoint or Excel or Outlook.
  • 00:43 So at this time, once you're in the other program, I'll pick on the Home menu and
  • 00:48 click on the pulldown where it says Paste, and we'll do a Paste Special.
  • 00:53 There's two reasons I like to do a paste special instead of just normal paste.
  • 00:57 First of all is going to look better, second of all,
  • 01:00 I have this feature that's called Paste Link and
  • 01:03 then when I pick on paste link, I'll do the Visio Drawing Object.
  • 01:08 So that really means if I change it in Visio,
  • 01:11 it'll change it here in PowerPoint as well and then we see the Visio diagram.
  • 01:15 Now here in PowerPoint, or in Word would just be, a picture on this and
  • 01:20 I can drag that or resize it and so on, right?
  • 01:24 So now the reason we did a paste link
  • 01:28 is because then I can change it in Visio and it'll change it here at the same time.
  • 01:33 So for example, I'm going to click on that shape, and we'll just make a quick change,
  • 01:37 I'll make it red with the fill.
  • 01:39 I'm going to save that diagram here in Visio and
  • 01:43 then let's go back to PowerPoint and you could see that it changed there as well.
  • 01:49 The reason that it changed is because we did a copy from Visio and
  • 01:54 we came over here and we did paste special and then paste link.
  • 01:59 Now if we have something that's in one of the other programs and
  • 02:03 we can put that into Visio the same way.
  • 02:06 So for example, I'm going to go into Excel and I have this chart and
  • 02:11 this should be among the sample files that come with this lesson.
  • 02:15 So I'm going to right click on that chart and I'll pick on Copy, right, we're
  • 02:21 in Excel, I'm going to copy the chart and we're going to go back into Visio, now.
  • 02:26 I'll pick on Paste and Paste Special and then once again,
  • 02:29 there's that choice Paste Link, so that means if that chart changes in Excel,
  • 02:33 it's going to change here at the same time.
  • 02:37 And now that chart is part of the diagram, of course,
  • 02:40 I'm going to resize that, maybe move it over here.
  • 02:44 So if I change the chart in Excel now, it'll change it here in Visio.
  • 02:49 So let me go back to Excel, so
  • 02:51 let's say I don't want to see the totals here or the percent of total.
  • 02:55 So I'm going to pick on this filter on the Excel chart and
  • 02:59 I'm just going to uncheck it where it says, Total and Percent of Total,
  • 03:05 and I'll pick on Apply and that took that away from the Excel chart, right?
  • 03:08 So I'm going to save that and then let's see if it brought that up in Visio.
  • 03:14 So now go back to Visio and you can see it changed it in Visio as well.
  • 03:19 So that's pretty powerful, we can copy something from Visio into the other
  • 03:24 programs and then on the other program you say paste special and then paste link.
  • 03:29 Or we can copy something from one of the other programs like Word or PowerPoint or
  • 03:33 Excel and then in Visio, we said paste special and then paste link.
  • 03:38 So if we change it on one side, it'll change on the other.
  • 03:42 So that's how we can go ahead and link to the other Office documents.

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