The good folks over at Concept Draw have released a great webservice that converts binary .vsd files into Visio XML. When you want to crack diagrams open in something like OmniGraffle you are not longer out of luck.

ConceptDraw Visio File Converter is a free web service, provided by Computer Systems Odessa that is available to anyone who uses diagramming software and has a requirement to open Visio (VSD) documents. This service have been created because Visio users often don’t save their drawing into Visio XML (VDX) file format. They typically send files as VSD documents, often making it difficult to read them by other diagramming software packages. It is a great problem especially for Macintosh users because Visio is not available on the Mac.

Definately good to keep in the old utility belt. Wish I had this a couple weeks ago when I needed to open some old visio files from my archives.