Using some Visio Shape Data in Visio for the Web

Like a lot of UK TV viewers last week, I watched Quiz, a drama about Major Charles Ingram who apparently cheated his way to the jackpot in Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Some of the questions that he was asked were quoted in that show, and I was surprised how easy the last two questions were for me, but that was probably because of my own education as a building architect. However, I decided to lookup the rest of the questions, and I would have fallen before getting to those questions unless my Phone-A-Friend could have helped me on one in particular. At the same time, I was thinking about the differences between Visio desktop and web editions (yeah, really!), so I have created a Visio document that contains all of the questions that the Major answered correctly. This document can be viewed by everyone and downloaded. If it is saved into OneDrive or SharePoint Online and then viewed online.

The Reading View of the Office file viewer does display the quiz question shapes, and you can see that there is some Shape Data on each one. The Question Shape Data value, and the hidden Shape Data row that contains the four alternative answers, is displayed as text in the shape so that you can see all of the question clearly over multiple lines.

The document can then be opened with Edit in Desktop App or Edit in Browser, depending upon which Visio license (or trial) that you have.

The user experience will be a little different, depending upon your choice…

Edit in Browser

Visio for the Web does not yet support Hyperlinks or Shape Data … well, actually that is not quite true. It does not destroy any Hyperlinks or Shape Data that have been created using the Desktop App or using Visio Data Visualizer, but it does not yet allow you to create or edit and Hyperlinks or Shape Data yet … well, that is also not quite true either.

Each of the questions has a right mouse menu that displays the question and possible answers. Just select one to see if you are correct.

See that your selection (A,B,C or D) is displayed along with a colour and symbol change to reflect the correctness of your choice! There is no million pounds to win, you are just testing your own knowledge, but it does demonstrate that you can change some Shape Data values in Visio for the Web, even though it does not yet officially support it!

In fact, each of the Question shapes are contained within a Visio List shape, and the number for each is automatically obtained from its position in the list. Try selecting one of the question shapes and hitting CTRL+D … you will get a duplicate of the selected question, but notice that the number is automatically updated.

Also notice that there are hyperlinks on each shape at the bottom of the quiz, and I have set the ScreenTip to display their Description and Address. Clicking the shape should open the target web page.

Edit in Desktop App

The Visio Desktop App is obviously more powerful, and there are far more features available.

The answer to each question can be chosen from the right mouse menu, from the Shape Data window, or from the Shape Data dialog, which can be opened by double-clicking a question shape.

The Hyperlinks are obviously available on the shapes at the bottom of the quiz, but this time they are available from the right mouse menu and the mouse double-click.

Visio Reading View

This the Visio document displayed within an iFrame in this web page:

Note that the document can be opened in full-page view from the above.

Conclusion

The more that I test the limitations of Visio for the Web, the more I can see that there are many solutions that can be developed using Visio for the Desktop, but edited within a web browser.

The ShapeSheet in Visio is seriously powerful, and it is good to see that a lot of the functionality still works in Visio for the Web.

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