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Converting Gliffy and draw.io to SVG

This blog post shows how to convert popular diagramming solutions to SVG.

Motivation

The motivation behind this blog post is a customer request:

When migrating from Confluence to SharePoint, how to migrate Gliffy diagrams as SVG files?

Unfortunately, WikiTraccs cannot do much in this regard. WikiTraccs migrates Confluence page attachments, which include the diagram file (from Gliffy or draw.io) and the diagram’s preview image. Read the previous blog post for details on that.

At least you end up having the diagram file in SharePoint Online.

Having the diagram file in SharePoint is a good thing, because it gives us the option to work with those diagrams even when Confluence is not around anymore.

How to export diagrams as SVG files

Let’s look at our options to export diagrams as SVG.

Gliffy => SVG

When Confluence is still around, you can export from Confluence:

  1. Open Confluence page
  2. Edit Gliffy diagram
  3. File… > Export > SVG

After having migrated to SharePoint Online, you need to work with the diagram file instead:

  1. Open a migrated SharePoint page
  2. Download the migrated Gliffy diagram file from the page’s attachments
  3. Open app.diagrams.net (a free online diagram software) in browser
  1. Drag the diagram file into the browser
  2. File > Export as > SVG…

draw.io => SVG

When Confluence is still around, you can export from Confluence:

  1. Open Confluence page
  2. Edit draw.io diagram
  3. File > Export as > SVG…

After having migrated to SharePoint Online, you need to work with the diagram file instead:

  1. Open migrated SharePoint page
  2. Download migrated draw.io diagram file from the page’s attachments
  3. Open app.diagrams.net?offline=1 in browser (a free online diagram software), in offline mode
  4. Drag the diagram file into the browser
  5. File > Export as > SVG…

Note that this doesn’t seem to upload the diagram file as it already has the draw.io format.

Privacy Considerations

When Confluence is not around anymore and you end up using app.diagrams.net (note: which is the only free tool I know of that can convert Gliffy to draw.io), there is one fundamental difference between Gliffy and draw.io files.

The app.diagrams.net online editor needs to convert Gliffy diagrams to draw.io diagrams first. This is done at a remote location. This means your diagram files will be uploaded to a third party.

This is contrary to draw.io diagram files. When loading those into the app.diagrams.net online editor, no upload seems to happen.

draw.io Desktop (free)

There is an alternative to app.diagrams.net and that is the draw.io Desktop application. You can download it at drawio.com.

draw.io Desktop seems to have the same capabilities as app.diagram.net. There is one important exception: the desktop version cannot convert Gliffy files to the draw.io format. Which is unfortunate when you only have Gliffy files that you want to convert to SVG.

There is no free offline tool available that I know of that can convert from Gliffy to draw.io.

Gliffy-to-draw.io Mass Conversion (paid-for)

There is a paid option available to convert Gliffy to draw.io when Confluence is still around.

The draw.io Confluence plugin can convert Gliffy to draw.io.

According to its documentation, it can do mass conversions of all Gliffy diagrams in a Confluence instance:

Also according to the documentation, it doesn’t require a license to do the actual conversion. But it will convert all Gliffy macros to draw.io macros as well, so having no license doesn’t seem to make sense.

Mass-converting Gliffy to draw.io before migrating to SharePoint seems like an option to have those draw.io files ready in SharePoint, in case users want to work with those diagrams using either app.diagrams.net or the draw.io Desktop app.