Microsoft Visio desktop has the ability to display icons from a built-in list of Office icons on Actions and Action Tags (nee Smart Tags). These can be set in the ShapeSheet by using the desired number from several thousand in the ButtonFace cell. Although there is the ability to add better icons using code, the quick ShapeSheet formulas are useful way of indicating the purpose of a command. This article simply lists the first 3,600 of these fas a quick and easy reference for me, and othe ShapeSheet disigners out there!
Unfortunately, some of the icons do not display and are just rendered as a red dot, as can be seen in the above screenshots, however, there are still hundreds to choose from. Selecting a suitable icon can be tedious, so I decided to show them all using an Action Tag that has its Display Mode set to ALWAYS.
In fact, I decided to display the icon with each Display Mode for an Action Tag, namely Always (2), Mouse Over (0) and Selected (1). I also set the icon on aan Actions row, one for Action Tags row, and one for the main shape. I simply used the formula DOCMD(1658) to open ScreenTip dialo to display the Button Face ID and the ID() of the shape with the following formula in the Comment cell, which is liberally referenced in th Actions and Action Tags sections.
="FaceId = "&FORMAT(Prop.FaceID,"0000")&" displayed on Shape "&ID()The following screenshots shows that the Action Tags row using the Mouse Over Display Mode, and the Actions rows, do not have the unfortunate black surround that happens on 64bit PCs.
Moreover, Action Tags do not work in Visio for the web at all, and te Action Tags can be toggled off in Visio desktop using File | Options | Advanced | Display with the Actions checkbox.
One other feature of Action Tags is that they stay the same size in your screen, regardless of the zoom level in the Visio document.
The Visio document displayed above can be downloaded using this link : Face IDs.vsdx.
Creating Boolean Context Menus in Visio
Over the many, many years that I have been creating Microsoft Visio solutions, I have had to create numerous right-mouse context menus for shapes to control their Shape Data values. Over that time, patterns emerge, so this article is highlighting three different appearances for simple Boolean values, otherwise known as True/False or Yes/No values, and…
A visual exploration of Penrose Tiling in Visio
Maybe it is because I used to be a building architect, but I have always been fascinated by the relationship between numbers and visualisations. Perhaps the most famous one is the Golden Ratio which has been used as the basis of many building designs and art pieces. It is often recognised to create a harmony…
How SVG in Visio can cause a Shape.BoundingBox(…) error
I have used Visio’s Shape.BoundingBox(…) for many, many years and I cannot ever recall it failing, but I have now managed to create some shapes that cause it to error. This caused many hours of confusion, so I nearly abandoned using the method, until I discussed it with my fellow Visio MVP, John Goldsmith (see…
Jumping between Shapes in Visio
Many Visio diagrams get quite large, and sometimes it is useful to provide the ability to jump to another shape quickly in the same document, either on a different page or on the same one. Although there is an add-on provided in desktop Visio that is used by the Off-Page Reference shape provided in the…
Fixing dimensions of 2D shapes
I am often asked what makes Visio unique and makes it stand out from the crowd, especially in today’s online world. Well, I think there are many reasons, but one of them is the ability to create scaled drawings with parametric components of specific dimensions. This was crucial for my adoption of Visio back in…
Smart Radio Buttons and Check Boxes in Visio
A recent project requires an interactive tutorial within Microsoft Visio desktop where a lot of the questions need a single answer using radio buttons, or multiple-choice answers using check boxes. I thought that this would be a great use of the list containers capability because the questions and answers could be part of the container…
I have long suspected that installing more Office apps, like, say, Publisher, would fill in some of the missing icons. But I’ve never really tested it. Have you looked into this?
Some of them … but they don’t all work properly in Visio.