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Understanding Visio Connections

A reader recently asked if I could explain how to programmatically get the shapes connected to a shape in Visio. So, I thought I would have a go, because there are alternatives, depending upon which functions are used, and what parameters are passed to them. The following animated gif is rotating around the different types of selections that can be made from the lower Decision shape. Normally, two 2D shapes are connected together using a 1D shape. The 1D shape has a direction because it starts from “BeginX” and finishes at “EndX”. This is irrespective of an arrowheads that the user may have chosen to adorn the 1D connector with at either end.

multiSelect Children and Parents

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Formatting Shape Data in Visio

One of the best aspects of Visio is the ability of shapes to hold data, and the easiest way to do this is to define rows of Shape Data. Each row can be defined as holding one of eight different types, and most of these can have their values formatted for display. In this article I discuss the formatting of these values, using either ShapeSheet functions or automation methods. The driver for this is my on-going frustration with the Microsoft provided standard Shape Data window because of its shortcomings … for example, its lack of multi-line support even though it can hold 64k characters in each row, and its lack of a time control, even though it can store dates and time.

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Updating the file path of data linked Excel tables in Visio

Link Data to Shapes in Visio (not the Standard edition though) is great for visualizing information, and I often use a multi-worksheet Excel workbook that I create locally, and then wish to re-link to a copy of the workbook elsewhere, or even in Office365. This is a simple task if there are only one or two Excel tables involved, but can become tedious when there are many. So, this blog is presents an semi-automated method of achieving this.

Firstly I have an Excel workbook that I have many worksheets with tables of data on them. I named each worksheet, and used the Format As Table command on each.

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Checking the Bitness of Microsoft Office, Visio Viewer and Visio

Visual Studio setup an deployment projects require the target “bitness” of target Windows operating system to be set. This means that I have to create two installation files, one for 32bit and one for 64bit Windows for my Visio add-ins, for example.

The bitness of an individual Visio application can be checked from the File / Account / About Visio dialog, and similar screens are available in other Office applications:

About Visio dialog

64bit Windows users can install either 32bit or 64bit Microsoft Office, which will install the relevant Visio Viewer package. The installed edition of Visio should then match the installed edition of Office.

Any Visio add-in installations need to match the bitness of the installed Visio application.

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Using JavaScript to Find and Highlight Visio Shapes by Shape Data values in SharePoint Content Editor

In August, I wrote about Using JavaScript to Display Visio Shape Data and Hyperlinks in SharePoint Content Editor ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/08/16/using-javascript-to-display-visio-shape-data-and-hyperlinks-in-sharepoint-content-editor/ ), so now I have added the ability to select shapes by a property value. The main advantage of using JavaScript in the client is that there is no need to go back to the server to refresh the page.

In the following screenshot, I have used the standard web part connections between the BeSmart Ltd document library view and the Visio Web Access control in order to set the Drawing URL.

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Using JavaScript to Display Visio Shape Data and Hyperlinks in SharePoint Content Editor

I like embedding Visio diagrams into SharePoint web pages, but I am not too enamoured with the Shape Info panel and the popup hyperlinks menu because they clutter the diagram surface. So, I thought I would take some time to make an html document that can be included in a Content Editor web part. This html document includes JavaScript to read the hyperlinks and Shape Data of each selected shape, and, besides providing the opportunity to style the resultant table, allows you to interpret the content of the Shape Data values, and even the hyperlinks. I have shown an example where the multiple hyperlinks on the selected shape are clickable in the top list, and those interpreted from the values in Shape Data rows are clickable, and listed below the regular Shape Data rows. Of course, I could have combined the two types of hyperlinks into one list, separated from the regular Shape Data. Note that the values in the built-in Shape Info panel are not clickable. 

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So, this means that I can do away with the Shape Info panel and the hyperlinks popup within the Visio Web Access control, and provide hyperlinks, buttons, images, media files, or whatever, in the Content Editor html document. Therefore, I untick the Show the Shape Information Pane option, and tick the Disable Hyperlink option in the web part editor.

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