Cannot open Visio document with Python

Question

I am attempting to do some automation in Visio using Python. I am able to open the Visio application and create a new document, but cannot open an existing document. Here is the code that I am trying.

  import win32com.client

  visio = win32com.client.Dispatch("Visio.Application")  # this works
  doc = visio.Documents.Open("C:\Users\username\test.vsd") # nope

The error I get back is

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<COMObject <unknown>>", line 3, in OpenEx
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147352567, 'Exception occurred.', (0, u'Microsoft Visio', u'\n\nFile not found.', None, 0, -2032465466), None)

I have tried using visio.Documents.OpenEx as well and get the same answer. Any thoughts?

can you try `doc = visio.Documents.Open(r"C:\Users\username\test.vsd")` — g4ur4v, Sep 23 '14 at 18:20

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '14 at 18:44

5

I am guessing that this might work -

doc = visio.Documents.Open("C:\\Users\\username\\test.vsd")

answered Sep 23 '14 at 18:44

hyades

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Nice! Didn't realize I had to escape the backslashes. Thanks a lot! – Chris Sep 23 '14 at 20:56
I thought Visio itself is not installed in the machine... but if it worked then +1 – Puneet Sinha Jan 10 '19 at 06:41

Puneet Sinha · Answer 2 · 2019-01-10T06:43:22.843

0

Instead of forward slashes you can use backward ones

doc = visio.Documents.Open(r"C:\Users\username\test.vsd")

or

doc = visio.Documents.Open("C:/Users/username/test.vsd")

edited Jan 10 '19 at 06:43

answered Dec 20 '18 at 06:38

Puneet Sinha

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Cannot open Visio document with Python

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