VSD → PDF is for the archive of Visio 2003–2010 drawings on a shared drive: page size, shapes and labels come through, while dimension fields lose their unit formatting.
From real runs
| Element | Result | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Page size and orientation | Kept | A Visio 2003 floor-plan sketch stayed one Letter landscape page (792 × 612 pt), and a Visio 2000 drawing of the same plan kept the same sheet. |
| Shapes and fills | Kept | The yellow room fill, the L-shaped wall outline and its 20% transparent label background all rendered in place. |
| Text fields with units | Changed | Fields that Visio formats with units show raw values: Geometry Width read 300.0000 instead of 25 ft, and an angle of -5 deg came out as -0.0873. |
| Embedded pictures | Kept | A test drawing tiled with placed bitmaps, some rotated and scaled, kept every tile in the PDF. |
| Embedded charts and tables | Changed | Objects pasted in from Excel appear as the picture Visio stored for them: the bar chart and data table are visible but no longer live data. |
| Visio 2003 XML (.vdx) | Kept | Two .vdx files opened like binary drawings, including Cyrillic labels, dashed connectors and a cloud shape. |
| Visio 5 and earlier | Lost | A Visio 5 floor plan came out with its dimension lines shifted off the room and no text at all, so files that old are refused before conversion. |
A Visio 2003 floor-plan sketch stayed one Letter landscape page (792 × 612 pt), and a Visio 2000 drawing of the same plan kept the same sheet.
The yellow room fill, the L-shaped wall outline and its 20% transparent label background all rendered in place.
Fields that Visio formats with units show raw values: Geometry Width read 300.0000 instead of 25 ft, and an angle of -5 deg came out as -0.0873.
A test drawing tiled with placed bitmaps, some rotated and scaled, kept every tile in the PDF.
Objects pasted in from Excel appear as the picture Visio stored for them: the bar chart and data table are visible but no longer live data.
Two .vdx files opened like binary drawings, including Cyrillic labels, dashed connectors and a cloud shape.
A Visio 5 floor plan came out with its dimension lines shifted off the room and no text at all, so files that old are refused before conversion.
We converted our Microsoft Visio 2000–2010 sample (220 KB) with Office engine on 2026-10-20. It took 1.6 s and produced a 17 KB PDF file, 92% smaller than the input. The engine raised 1 warning, listed below.
Input · sample.vsd · 220 KB
224,768 bytes
Output · sample.pdf · 17 KB
PDF 1.6, 1 page, selectable text (LiberationSans), 0 image objects
LibreOffice
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir out *.vsdConverts a folder in one call. Expect the same raw field values, and check each output: LibreOffice gives no error for a page that came out empty.
The HTTP API and the MCP server run the exact engine this page uses (Office engine); the response carries the same warnings the web converter shows. Check support first with GET /api/v1/pairs?from=vsd&to=pdf.
curl -X POST https://filetypeconverters.com/api/v1/convert \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $FTC_API_KEY" \
-F "file=@input.vsd" -F "from=vsd" -F "to=pdf" \
--output output.pdfBinary .vsd files from Visio 2000 up to Visio 2019 (which can still save the 2003–2010 format), and Visio 2003–2010 XML .vdx files. Visio 5 and older are refused because they lose all their text.
Visio stores the measurement in inches and formats it when it draws the label. Our office engine shows the stored value without the unit format, so 300.0000 is 25 feet in inches. Re-save as .vsdx in Visio if those labels matter.
No. VSD is the binary format Visio used up to 2010; VSDX is the zipped XML format since Visio 2013. Both convert here, and the .vsdx page lists what changes for newer files.