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Shape Data

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Narrated Text in Visio for Accessibility

One of the ways that Visio supports accessibility is to provide text that is read out by a screen reader, such as Windows Narrator or JAWS. This Alt Text can be set using Format Shape / Size & Properties tab using the Title and Description text boxes. The Title is the initial text that is read out when a shape is attentioned, and the Description will only read out if the user pauses. The Description text box only allows 255 characters to be entered and displayed, but this is not actually the limit!

VisioAltText
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Prototyping Visio ShapeSheet Formulas in Excel

I am working on an application where the horizontal axis of the Visio page represents dates from left to right. In fact, the each of the fixed horizontal grids are 1 day, and I need to have shapes that understand the begin date at the left edge of the shape, and the end date at the right edge of the shape. There is, therefore, a number of elapsed days representing by the width of the shape. However, the underlying grid can either represent all days, or it can be changed to only represent weekdays by omitting the weekends. I struggled to find the best formula to calculate the elapsed days or weekdays between two dates in Visio ShapeSheet formulas, so I turned to Excel to provide an inspiration. The Visio ShapeSheet is modelled on the Excel worksheet, and formulas can be entered into the cells in much the same way. However, the available functions differ since Excel is mainly used for arithmetic and statistics, but Visio is used for graphics and data. In this article, I demonstrate how I used C# and Excel to construct and test formulas for use in a Visio shape.

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Replacing Images in Visio Shapes by Changing Data

I wrote an article last year about Swapping Images in a #Visio Shape manually, but I want to be able to do this whenever a Shape Data value changes. This is because I use I invariably use shapes linked to data. I also want to be able to have multiple images within a single grouped shape, and all of them changing when their referenced Shape Data values change. I believe that this will be more adaptable for a lot of scenarios than trying to repurpose Data Graphic Icon Sets ( see  Make Your Own Visio Data Graphic Icons Sets … automatically). I also discovered that the Shape.ChangePicture(…) function can just as easily work with urls as it can with network file paths, so even more possibilities are opened up! For example, the Visio Online JavaScript API has the ability to overlay an image (see ShapeView.addOverlay(…)).
So, I have created some macros to provide quick and easy selection, positioning and updating of images within a group shape.

personphotosbydata


I decided to present this article with VBA code rather than my preferred C# so that a stencil could be downloaded to provide instant usability, rather than having to install an add-in. It can be download from Image Utils.vssm, and should then be placed in to My Shapes folder, so that it becomes available to open in Visio. When it is opened, then the macros will need to be enabled.
There are just five public macros:

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Controlling Visio layers with linked data

Readers of my blog will know that I use the layers in Visio pages to change the display for different scenarios. My macro to toggle layers on/off has been very popular, and I have written an add-in to manage layers that is widely used. However, I was recently asked if the layer settings can be controlled from linked data. Linking data in Visio has been available in all desktop editions, except Standard, since 2007, and I have written many articles and two books extolling this feature, but I haven’t so far controlled layer settings with it, so this article describes how this can be done … as shown in the following screen recording!

UpdatingLayersFromData
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Really Snapping to Grids in Visio

Visio has the ability to refine the options for snapping shapes to just grids, but this does not necessarily mean that shapes will automatically position themselves on a grid, or that the size is a multiple of a grid. What if you want some shapes to always be positioned on a fixed grid, and the width and height to always be a multiple on the horizontal and vertical grids respectively? What if you want the grid to start at the top left rather then the default bottom left? Fortunately, the ShapeSheet of the page and shapes can provide this ability, without the need for any external code.


You can set the page to have Fixed horizontal and vertical grids, each with different minimum spacing, if necessary. You can set the grid and ruler origins using the Ruler & Grid dialog, but it will be always relative to the bottom left corner of the page. So this can be a problem if you change the print margins or the page size, if you really want the grid origin to remain in another position, like top left.
You can just leave the Grid for snapping, and even change its strength to Strong, and even enter a larger number manually. This can help with snapping to the grids, but it is not enforced to be exclusive to the grids.

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Using JSON text in Visio shapes

I often create Visio masters with a fixed number of Shape Data rows, and sometimes I get requests to modify them because of changes in business needs. Well, my previous posts about Graph Databases got me thinking if it would be possible to embed JSON text in Visio shapes in some sort of meaningful way. Then the user could enter just attribute-value pairs at will, without the need for me to modify their master shape. Alternatively, the data could be inserted into the shape from a database, such as SQL server. So, in this article I discuss the suitability of JSON text in Visio shapes.

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