bVisual

bVisual Blog by David Parker

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Making Custom Shapes for Visio for M365

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?

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Referencing Container Data in Visio

Microsoft Visio has a useful Structured Diagramming concept that consists of Containers, Callouts and Connectors. The first of these features make it possible for shapes to know what they are contained within, as a better option to grouping shapes together. Grouping can hide or break the grouped shapes smartness, so Visio provides two ways of allowing shapes to be members of one or more containers. There are a few built-in Container shapes that can be added with the Insert / Diagram Parts / Container gallery, but shape developers can also create their own. Member shapes can be positioned anywhere within the container. There is a second type of container, List, that provides the ability to have ordered member items. There is no ribbon command to add these, but there are a number of these special shapes provided in the OOTB Visio stencils. For example, dragging and dropping a List box shape from the Software and Database / Software / Controls stencil will automatically add three List box item shapes to it.

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Understanding Morse Clicks with Visio

A few years ago, I wrote an article about messaging and encryption inspired by a visit to the National Museum of Computing in the UK. I developed a Morse Click shape to demonstrate how Visio can be used to represent and learn Morse Code. However, I never published the shapes here, and my good friend John Marshall recently wrote an article about Braille in Visio, so I thought I should explain how I made the Morse Click shapes, and I took the opportunity to enhance the shapes with some accessibility features that I have learnt since I originally designed them. I have also changed the shapes to be Visio Web friendly, which means, for example, removing shape effects.

I think I learnt Morse Code as a Cub Scout, but forgotten it in the half-century since. Its evolution, and its use today still makes very interesting reading. Each letter comprises of between one and four short or long clicks, whilst each number has five such clicks. Generally, the most used letters have lesser clicks, with ET being the lowest number, presumably to save an extra terrestrial money on a phone call home!

  • Number of Clicks per Character
  • With page Shape Data Hide Text = False

There are just two master shapes of interest here, Morse Click and Morse Click Rack, and a couple of page Shape Data rows. The Morse Click shape can be anyone of the 36 characters with a simple Shape Data value change, whilst the Morse Click Rack is a list shape and can spell out the words of up to 26 Morse Click shapes within it.

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SS Plus for Visio enhanced to support non-English PowerPoint Smart Layouts

A while ago, I wrote an add-in for Visio Plan 2, SS Plus, that enhances the PowerPoint export from Visio. This has been working fine for this using Microsoft Office in English, but a problem was recently brough to my attention about non-English users. The problem was that the PowerPoint Smart Layou names are in English, and were not showing up in the drop-down list on the SS Plus Settings dialog. This meant that no Smart Layout was being applied automatically to the export from Visio. Well, I am pleased to report that this has now been fixed, and existing users can upgrade free of chare, whilst others can download to trial for free.

The solution is not absolutely perfect though, because the list may appear initially in English until the first export is done to PowerPoint. SS Plus then grabs the names of the Smart Layouts from PowerPoint in the Office language.

I am afraid that the rest of the text is still in English though, because I am not fluent in anything else … to my shame!

In case there are any other requests, I have also added in a new Feedback form.

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Visio Presentations for the Microsoft Ignite The Tour 2020

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…

David Parker talking about Microsoft Visio …
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Correcting the Text Control Handle on Visio Network Shapes

There are literally thousands of master shapes in the stencils supplied with Microsoft Visio, so I guess that mistakes can creep in. One error that I have noticed is the inability of the default text control handle of many of the network shapes to actually move the text block horizontally.

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