Sending Data to Word and Excel

You can send brainstorming data directly to Word and Excel and in fact, to any program that accepts XML input. Data in the Outline Window is exported to a Word or Excel document and is opened as an XML file. Any changes can be saved to this XML file, which can then be imported back into Visio.

To export data as an XML file, in the Manage section of the Brainstorming tab, click Export Data and select either Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. Note that these options are available, only if you have the 2016 versions of Word and Excel installed on your computer. For other versions of Word and Excel or for using any other compatible program, select To XML… instead.

For example, when you export the data to Excel, Visio automatically opens Excel once you save the XML file. In Excel, the data is organized into topic levels. For example, T1 represents the main topic, T1.1 represents the first subtopic under the main topic, T1.1.1. represents further subtopics under the subtopic and so on. You can add or remove topic hierarchies here and save the XML file, which can then be reimported back into Visio.