Post by Steve LittI have a client who uses MSOffice, and I have only LibreOffice. I've
made some Mental Model diagrams for this client using LibreOffice Draw,
but now I need to convert these into whatever format MS Office uses for
their drawings. Anyone know how to do that, and what the MSOffice draw
format is?
o Short Answer
Your two (2) best bets are either ...
1) Export as W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)**, or
2) Embed the vector graphics in a Word or PowerPoint document
o Deeper Discussion
For option #1 ... Many SVG solutions have non-standard extensions and
variations, including Adobe Illustrator, MS Visio (which lacked SVG
for a long time), even LibreOffice Draw. About the only "pure" SVG
solution I've seen is Inkscape.
For option #2 ... I recommend you find out the exact "end document"
(e.g., Word, PowerPoint, etc..) the customer expects, and copy'n paste
your vector graphics into that format, and save. Alternatively,
export W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) created by either
LibreOffice Draw or, more clean yet, Inkscape.
o MS Office Background
_No_ MS Office edition comes with a full drawing suite, and each
program has small variations in meta-data. There are some differences
in meta-data between MS Word and MS PowerPoint that don't always
exchange correctly in cut'n paste.
To make matters worse, MS Publisher uses yet a 3rd set of vector and
raster graphics formats, and more loss can occur with cut'n paste.
And never OLE Publisher into another MS format, or expect issues if
the users doesn't have Publisher also installed.
However, when Microsoft purchased Visio, it got a separate product,
which still remains _poorly_ integrated with MS Office, and still
_not_ in any MS Office Edition. I.e., sometimes marketed as part of
MS Office, but it's in _no_ edition, that provides such, including
_not_ being a part of Office365.
KEY POINT:
Understand a lot of customers will _not_ have Visio, or a lot of their
employees won't have an entitlement to it. It's $299 for Standard,
$499 for Pro, the last time I checked. Yes, _more_ costly than many
MS Office Editions, hence why many desktops do _not_ have it. So ...
You'll want to either do #1 or #2, and there's a possible #3 ...
o Filters
Visio has a plethora of file formats that take a long time to explain. [1]
LibreOffice Draw does _not_ have an _export_ filter for Visio
diagrams. So you'll want to use SVG, which other MS Office programs
can read. Visio's SVG import varies, just like it's export.
However ... LibreOffice 4.1+ includes a decent MS Visio _import_
filter, for diagrams, but _not_ stencils (long story). That means ...
3) You could introduce LibreOffice to your client as not only a "free"
drawing program, but even better ..
A way for them to "read" their own Visio documents as they likely do
_not_ have Visio on every desktop. ;)
E.g., they read in Visio, and then copy'n paste -- using LibreOffice
-- into a Word or PowerPoint they can then save. ;)
-- bjs