The simplest way to provide viewing of Visio documents without Visio is to use the Microsoft Outlook desktop application or Windows File Explorer. Microsoft Outlook uses a Visio previewer that can display Visio files either included as e-mail attachments or within SharePoint document libraries, as shown in the following screenshot:
The Visio previewer is the Microsoft Visio Viewer control, but a lot of its functionality has been hidden to reduce it to viewing graphics only.
The control uses ActiveX technology and has an API that provides developers access to each shape and their data labels and values, as well as hyperlinks. It also has the ability to switch layers off and on. It is a shame that these functions are hidden inside Microsoft Outlook.
However, the Microsoft Visio Viewer control can be inserted into a Windows application, such as Microsoft Excel. It is listed as Microsoft Visio Document when...