Compare Visio Technical 5 and Visio Professional

I use Visio Technical 5 at work. If I get Visio Professional 2003, will I have everything I have in Visio Technical 5? Also, is it backwards compatible? Will I have all of the same tools (trucks, cars, streets)? Or, is there an upgrade to Visio Technical 5? I cannot find any information.

Also, if I take a class in Visio Professional, will it apply to Visio Technical 5?

Your asking about several 'generational' changes within the product. A lot
has been changed/added/removed. Regarding the 'tools', many of the shapes
can still be used between them. Can you read a V5 with V2003, yes. Can you
save a V5 from V2003, no. Is there and upgrade, not since v2003 became
generally available (doesn't mean you might not be able to purchase a
v2000/v2002 elsewhere). The 'heart' of visio, the shapesheet, is still
remarkably similar among all current versions and classes should be very
similar.
Al
"Evelyn" wrote in message
...
I use Visio Technical 5 at work. If I get Visio Professional 2003, will I
have everything I have in Visio Technical 5? Also, is it backwards
compatible? Will I have all of the same tools (trucks, cars, streets)? Or,
is there an upgrade to Visio Technical 5? I cannot find any information.

Also, if I take a class in Visio Professional, will it apply to Visio
Technical 5?

If you can get a hold of a Visio 2002 upgrade you can upgrade to Visio 2002
and then upgrade to Visio 2003, but I would check to see if the two upgrades
cost more than a new copy.

With Visio 2003, the Visio Technical flavour was dropped, but the content
that was in Visio Technical is now in Visio Professional. Do to licensing
reasons some of the content of Visio Technical was dropped (for example the
steel cross sections). Luckily, if you have stencils in Visio 5 that are not
in Visio 2003, Visio 2003 can load and upgrade the stencil. The only problem
may be that certain add-in functions may not work.

John... Visio MVP

Need stencils or ideas? http://www.mvps.org/visio/3rdparty.htm
Need VBA examples? http://www.mvps.org/visio/VBA.htm
Common Visio Questions http://www.mvps.org/visio/common_questions.htm
"Evelyn" wrote in message
...
I use Visio Technical 5 at work. If I get Visio Professional 2003, will I
have everything I have in Visio Technical 5? Also, is it backwards
compatible? Will I have all of the same tools (trucks, cars, streets)? Or,
is there an upgrade to Visio Technical 5? I cannot find any information.

Also, if I take a class in Visio Professional, will it apply to Visio
Technical 5?