It is common to draw figures or diagrams with Microsoft Visio, as it is really an awesome all-in-one tool! Visio has numerous templates as well as an easy-to-use interface, by simply clicking and dragging with a mouse, a fantastic diagram will be there.

For people working on a document, e.g. an academic paper, if you are using Microsoft Word, you can just Ctrl + c and Ctrl + v from Visio to Word and the diagram will be precisely placed at where your cursor is; however, for people who are working with Latex, things are not that smooth, or, unfortunately, really tricky. It is impossible for Latex to directly accept .vsdx file as they are not compatible. Visio can export diagrams as PDF format, but when I was trying to insert a diagram as a PDF file, it did not show well. Besides, as Visio can also export diagrams as SVG files, and Latex can render a SVG file with the help of a specific package(svg), well, what if that package is not available? Thus, I am going to introduce a way that converts a Visio diagram into .eps format.

Firstly, export the Visio file as a PDF file[File]-[Export]-[Create PDF/XPS]. Be careful of exporting all pages or some pages of a Visio diagram.

Then, if you need to crop a PDF, you can download a PDF editor to do it. There are several products available such as PDFElement, Adobe Acrobat and Foxit PDF Editor. Just pick one and do it.

After that, you need a tool that can convert a PDF document to a EPS document that is well compatible with Latex. Just download Inkscape and install it. After installation, open the PDF diagram with Inkscape[File]-[Open]. There is a prompt PDF Import Settings which are important, do choose Poppler/Cairo import, otherwise the font would be displayed with incorrect encoding.

Then save the opened PDF as an EPS file by [File]-[Save As…]-[Encapsulated PostScript]. There is another Prompt settings, choose PostScript level 3 and tick Embed fonts as Text Output Options. Do not tick filter effects. You can set the DPI of the exported EPS file, recommended is 1200 dpi. Tick Use document’s page size and then press OK. Then, it is OK! An EPS file will be there and just insert it into your Latex file!