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You are here: Home / Visio / Automatically displaying Visio shape text in other shapes

Published on October 22, 2021 by David Parker

Automatically displaying Visio shape text in other shapes

There are times, in Visio, when you just need to ensure that the text in a primary shape is synchronised with the text in different secondary shapes … even if they are on different pages of a Visio document. My previous article, Forcing Display Update of Inherited Data Values , describes a method of synchronising the values in Shape Data rows from a central data source in the document, and that allows for the values to be viewed and edited in multiple pages or shapes. However, the text of a Visio shape is different because it is not stored in a single ShapeSheet cell, so how can you display the text of one shape in another?

In this example, I have a primary rectangle which I can edit the text of. I then have other secondary shapes that need to display the text of that primary shape.

First, you need to get the name of the of the primary shape. This can be read on the Shape Name dialog from the Developer tab.

  • Get the name of the primary shape
  • Use a formula to display text from the primary shape
  • Add th page reference, if on a different page

Select the secondary shape, then click Insert \ Field \ Custom Formula.

If the primary shape is on the same page, then can be:

=SHAPETEXT(Sheet.1!TheText)

However, if the primary shape is on a different page, then a reference to that page must be included:

=SHAPETEXT(Pages[Page-1]!Sheet.1!TheText)

This short video shows this process…

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I was recently asked how a control handle can be added to a Visio shape so that it can be used to re-position the text block. Fortunately, it is extremely easy to setup, and requires just two formulas to be updated in the ShapeSheet. This is a great use of the SETATREF(…) function. (more…)

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Filed Under: ShapeSheet Formulas, Visio Tagged With: ShapeSheet Functions, Visio

About David Parker

David Parker has 25 years' experience of providing data visualization solutions to companies around the globe. He is a Microsoft MVP and Visio expert.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Mark says

    October 22, 2021 at 2:16 pm

    I design electrical control systems for many types of facilities. I need to link the sheet number to the page description. Right now when a customer calls I have to count through the page descriptions to guess at what the sheet number is. Can you provide a solution?

    Reply
  2. Surrogate says

    November 11, 2021 at 7:57 am

    Hi !

    I prepare simple tool for create reference to cells in shapes.
    Brief decription you can find at my site:
    https://surrogate-tm.github.io/snippets/shapesheet_en.html

    There also you can find video in Russian, but you can watch
    with English sub-titles.

    Reply
    • David Parker says

      November 11, 2021 at 10:46 am

      Thanks Alex!

      Reply

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