Occasionally, I have the need to open a Visio diagram but don't have a need to create or modify them. So, the Visio viewer seemed to be an ideal option. However, after installing the viewer (I tried this with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), I was still unable to open a Visio file.
The best I could get was Windows asking what I would like to use to open the file and Visio viewer wasn't an option. After drilling down to find the executable file, I found the viewer (VPREVIEW.EXE) would display a message saying "This program can only run from within another program” when I tried to execute it. I discovered the Visio viewer is designed to use ActiveX controls within Internet Explorer. Since I had disabled IE 11 on my system (using the "Turn Windows features on or off"), the viewer had nowhere to execute since Edge doesn't support ActiveX.
I found a Chrome plug-in in the Chrome web store that will allow me to view Visio files from inside Chrome. However, it requires me to click on a tag in the Chrome header and then drag the Visio file into the Chrome window.
So, the alternatives appear to be to enable IE 11 or use a Chrome plug-in.