1. Open it in a free online viewer
The quickest way: drop the file into the Visio Viewer. It shows every page of the drawing as a picture in your browser, on Windows, Mac, Chromebook or iPad. It opens .vsdx, .vsdm, the older .vsd format and Visio XML (.vdx).
Viewing is free and needs no account. If you need the drawing as a PDF to forward or print, or as PNG pictures to paste into a document, the downloads are $19 once.
2. Ask the sender for a PDF
In Visio, File, Export, Create PDF saves the whole drawing as a PDF. That works fine for a one-off. The catch: every time the diagram changes, you have to ask again.
3. Visio for the web, if your work account has it
Many business Microsoft 365 plans include a light web version of Visio. If yours does, upload the file to OneDrive or SharePoint and open it there.
4. LibreOffice Draw (free desktop app)
LibreOffice is a free office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux, and its Draw app opens .vsdx and .vsd files and can even edit them. It's a large install, and Visio 2013 and later drawings often come out with black boxes or missing arrows, because it reads the theme colours differently. The Visio Viewer runs the same engine with a fix for that colour problem, so it's worth trying both if one looks wrong.
What you can and can't do without Visio
- You can see every page, read all the text, zoom in, and save it as PDF or pictures.
- You can't edit the drawing and save it back as .vsdx without Visio or LibreOffice Draw.
- Macros in .vsdm files never run in a viewer. That's a good thing if you didn't expect the file.
Other Visio file types
.vsd is the binary format used up to Visio 2010. .vsdm is a .vsdx with macros. .vdx is the old Visio XML format. .vssx files are stencils (shape libraries) and .vstx files are templates; those don't hold a drawing to look at.