I am delighted to announce that I have just had my first Excel add-in accepted in the Office Add-ins Store! It is called Shape Report Converter because all it does is convert a Shape Report converted from Visio for Desktop to a modern Excel table with one click!
It isn’t a complicated add-in, and it doesn’t do anything that you can’t do manually, but it does save time, and ensures consistency … and it is free!
I have written a page about what it does at Visio Shape Report Converter , but there have also been some learnings for me, as this was my first M365 add-in, as opposed to the VSTO add-ins that I normally write for Visio for Desktop.
My first mistake was to initially call this add-in Visio Shape Report Converter, because I eventually figured out that the word Visio was preventing me from submitting it for review.
My second mistake was assuming that Microsoft testers had ever heard of Visio because even though my testing instructions clearly stated that a report must first be exported from Visio for Desktop, they initially tried to just convert a randomly entered range of text in Excel, then failed to find the Shape Reports button in Visio for the Web (it doesn’t exist!), so I had to supply already exported Visio reports for them to test with.
Well, having solved those issues, anybody in the English-speaking world can get this add-in from Insert / Add-ins / Get Add-ins, and searching for Visio or any of the words in its name :
It is also available in Excel for the Web!
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Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio to the limits!
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New book available for pre-order : Mastering Data Visualization with Microsoft Visio Professional 2016
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