I recently revised my chess and checkerboard Visio documents to work in Visio for the Web (Visio Plan 1), but now that Microsoft are providing a version of Visio free to M365 business users, I need to make some further adjustment to get them to work for these users who do not have a Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2 license. The problem is that Microsoft restricts the capabilities of the free version by white-listing Visio masters. So, the answer is to delete the masters … then the Visio document becomes editable in Visio for M365!

So, what is the downside?
Firstly, the size of the Visio document will increase when the masters in the Document Stencil are deleted.


The size is increased because Viso must remove all the inheritance of the formulas in the ShapeSheet of each shape. For example, the images below show some of the ShapeSheet of a single Chess Piece where it is an instance of a master, and where it is not. In the inherited version, there is extraordinarily little blue text to be seen. The blue text indicates that the value is stored locally in the shape, and in this example, it is only for the position and the specific shape color and icon data. However, every single formula is blue in the version without masters because Visio cannot inherit anything, so must store it all locally with the shape. Therefore, the file gets larger!
This is just a small Visio document, but on larger ones, with more shapes and more masters, this can become a genuine problem.
Secondly, the ShapeSheet developer has lost the ability of making simple edits to the master shape and having them automatically inherited by all instances, in all pages. For me, this is a fundamental issue, however, there may be some Visio diagrams that may be suitable for publishing to M365 users by removing the masters. The chess and checkerboard diagrams are suitable for this because they do not need to be maintained once published.
So, now a Visio for M365 user can edit these Visio documents and play chess or checkers with other users. Of course, the Shapes panel can be minimized because no other masters are required to enjoy them, and the shapes still retain their smartness, as described in the previous articles.

Download the files to your own OneDrive for Business, Teams, or SharePoint Online folders.
Masterless Online Checkerboards.vsdx
I look forward to the day when we can make custom masters for Visio for M365 users!
Update to LayerManager add-in for non-English users
A French user of LayerManager recently reported that the Refresh Counts button was not working for him, and a few other users were recently finding that the trial period was reporting expired immediately after download. Both of these issues have hopefully been addressed in the latest version 23.3.1, which is available for free to current…
Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio beyond its limits
My last post was about some of the lessons learnt when trying to push Data Visualizer to its limits, but this one has some ways of overcoming these limitations. The main lesson learnt is that DV binds the shapes within the DV container shape, CFF Data Visualizer, and controls some of the ShapeSheet cells that…
Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio to the limits!
Regular readers of my blog will know that I like to use the Data Visualizer (DV) in Visio Plan 2, but I recently tried to help a user who really decided to push it to the limits. In this scenario, there were multiple connections, but with different labels, being created between the same flowchart shapes,…
Teams Tuesday Podcast Recording about Visio
I am delighted to share the link to my recent demonstration and conversation with fellow MVP Peter Ward about Visio in Teams. We discussed more than just Visio … and I look a bit like Max Headroom! (more…)
Linking Data to Visio Shapes in Code
One of the most useful capabilities of Visio Professional and Visio Plan 2 is to link external data to shapes and have them refreshed by changes in the data source. So, many of my solutions involve writing code to make these links, and they are covered with some VBA examples in my book, Mastering Data…
Editing Visio Layer Colours with LayerManager
Desktop Visio has a tremendous ability to assign shapes to none, one or more layers, and the efficient use of them can make a drawing so powerful by toggling layers visibility or locking certain layers whilst working on other layers. The same drawing can be used, displayed or printed for many different purposes just by…
Leave a Reply