A: 

You should not access the automation API of any Office program from ASP.NET or any other server environment. It is unsupported, will fail at random, and may cause you to violate the terms of your license with Microsoft.

Tell them "no". You'll be much happier.

John Saunders  2010-06-22 01:57:17
Ok, well that's that, then. My fallback plan is to recreate the gantt chart with some nested repeaters and javascript. Do you have any suggestions for the best way to get this out to a pdf? My jscript/repeater solution relies heavily on client-side rendering, so some free print-to-pdf solution should get the job done. BUT...if I wanted to get fancy and go server side, do you have any recommendation(s)?
ajax81  2010-06-22 02:21:12
I recommend that you Google for web-based chart tools. There are many of them.
John Saunders  2010-06-22 04:57:29
A: 

Visio has an xml format (.vdx)

If you don't need Visio to help you with layout or connections, you might be able generate the xml files, then have your ASP app serve them up as consumable Visio files.

If you need Visio's Gantt-chart add-in features, or Visio's export to web or image features, then this might not be the way to go. But if you only need to place shapes on a page, set text and other data fields, and have a fairly simple layout and simple connecting lines, you should be able to go this route.

The last download link in this article is for a presentation on Visio and XML that I gave a while back:

http://www.visguy.com/2006/11/30/visio-and-xml-conference-resources/

Visio Guy  2010-07-22 22:46:50

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