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 Basic Flowcharts Shapes stencil (see my other posts), this article is about using the hyperlinks available in both the desktop and browser editions of Visio. Fortunately, Visio desktop has the ability to create hyperlinks to a specific shape by selecting the page and entering the name of the target shape. This creation ability is not available in Visio for the web, but using the desktop created ones is!
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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 1996 (see Chase Manhattan Bank – bVisual ), and since then I have created hundreds of dimensionally accurate catalogue components for use in scaled drawings for multiple manufacturers. Over the years, I have developed some patterns in ShapeSheet formulas that I re-use consistently. In this article I show the pattern that I use to provide a user with specific width and height dimensions that can be selected in any of three ways:
- Manual resize of the shape with the shape handles to only the specified sizes
- Selecting a dimension from the Shape Data panel
- Selecting a dimension from the right-mouse Actions context menu
All of these options are linked together so that editing the list of specific sizes are easy to maintain.
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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 shape whilst the individual questions are presented as items in the list and automatically inheriting their particular question text from the containing list shape. So, this article provides these smart master shapes, and explains how they are built.
In Tutor mode, the Questions, Answers, Explanation and More Info can be edited 
In normal mode, the Questions are presented unmarked and without explanation 
Incorrect answers are marked with a red cross. An explanation and optional more info hyperlink is available 
Correct answers are marked with a green tick. An explanation and optional more info hyperlink is available.
Using Button Face Ids in Visio
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!
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Grid Snapping Revisited
I have previously tackled the subject of snapping to grids in Visio desktop (see https://bvisual.net/2018/06/19/really-snapping-to-grids-in-visio/ ) but a recent project required me to improve the example because it did not respond to all cursor arrow keys. The problem was that the previous solution could not understand which arrow key had been clicked, therefore it did not know if to reposition to the previous or next grid. The new ShapeSheet code solution can now respond to the correct arrow key … and all without any add-in. In addition, I also show how a Control point can be made to snap to a grid spacing, and how AutoConnect can be set to add the next shape at the right offset in both the horizontal and vertical directions.
Lastly, Microsoft released the web edition of Visio since the last article, and I demonstrate the difference behaviour of grid snapping between that and the desktop edition.
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Synchronizing Visio Shape Fill Color (or almost any cell) across pages
I was recently asked how the color of one shape can be changed and for other shapes to be automatically updated to the same color … even if they are on different pages! Well, it is possible with Microsoft Visio’s awesome ShapeSheet formulas. In fact, this capability is not limited to the FillForegnd cell … check out the Microsoft Learn page about SETATREF(…), and view the video below to find out more.
