Just when we thought the pandemic was coming to an end, another variant appears to scupper our plans. So, resuming in-person events is delayed, and the world isn’t safe until the world is immunised. Therefore, I decided to make the presentations that I was going to be presenting on the abandoned Microsoft Ignite The Tour last year available, although I did manage to go to London and Copenhagen before we all stopped flying around the globe…

Using Visio to bring real-world visualizations to Microsoft Power BI
Making Visio and Visio Online Diagrams Accessible for Visio Impairment
but there is nothing like being there ….
Moving Phases/Separators in Visio Cross-Functional Flowcharts?
I use Visio Cross-Functional Flowcharts a lot, but there is one thing that really bugs me … you can move function bands\swimlanes around, but you can’t move the phases\separators in the same way. The phases/separators are containers just like the function bands\swimlanes, so why can’t I move them? Actually, it is quite understandable when you…
Using Notepad++ to Edit Visio ShapeSheet formulas
Visio shapes get their smartness from the formulas that are entered into the ShapeSheet, but editing these formulas can be extremely tricky and prone to error because of the lack of a modern programmer’s interface. Formulas can be quite long (up to 64k characters) but even medium size ones like the one in User.GetWorkdays cell…
Adding a second Function header bar to Visio swimlanes
I was recently asked if a second function header bar can be added to the swimlanes in the cross-functional flowchart templates in Visio. Some swimlanes can get quite wide, so it can be useful to have a duplicate function header shape on the far-side too. It is quite simple to duplicate the existing function header…
More Parsing XML Data in Visio Shapes
My last article looked at parsing an XML string with a known structure and order of elements and attributes. This can be acceptable in some scenarios, but what if the elements or attributes are in a different order? Then it is necessary to use the element and attribute names rather than their index position. This…
Parsing XML data in Visio Shapes
One of my current projects uses XML data, and some of the values in the XML data control the display and content of Visio shapes. Therefore, I looked deeper into how the XML data can be used directly to control parts of the graphics. Although the external data linking feature in Visio Professional and Visio…
Highlighting dirty text in Visio shapes
I suppose I should explain what I mean by dirty text first 🙂 I often display the value of a Shape Data row in Visio text, but sometimes the solution requires that the value is also editable. This is ok if the client accepts that all editing is done with the Shape Data window or…
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