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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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Displaying SharePoint Document Library Column Values on Visio Services Diagrams

It is often useful to be able to link text or graphics to the values in the SharePoint document library that a Visio diagram is stored in. A SharePoint Document library is just a list with columns and Visio 2013 documents can be linked to the data in SharePoint lists … and it will be automatically refreshable. This means that Approval Status changes, for example, can be displayed as text or icons. This article goes through the methodology of linking data from the SharePoint document library to the Visio document.

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Visio for Mac ? Well, not really ….

My fellow Visio MVP, John Marshall (see https://johnvisiomvp.wordpress.com), pointed out recently that Lucid Software claim to have a Visio for Mac application that offers import and export of real Visio files. Well, although I would love to have a web-edition of Visio from Microsoft, I was interested to discover if the claims are true … so I signed up for a trial. I present my findings below, based on just one Visio document that I have used in this blog before ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2013/07/08/mvp-sessions-for-getting-started-with-visio-2010/ ). My conclusion is if you use Visio for high quality vector graphics or for any type of business intelligence then wait for Microsoft to do it right! Please do not even consider round tripping Visio files to Lucidcharts and back, because you will be extremely disappointed.

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Using SharePoint Choice Columns with Visio Services

Back in March 2014, I wrote about mapping SharePoint Column Types to Visio Shape Data Types ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/03/03/mapping-sharepoint-list-columns-to-visio-shape-data-types/ ), and I skipped over the remaining SharePoint column types that could not be directly mapped. I described Rich Text previously ( see http://blog.bvisual.net/2014/11/14/using-sharepoint-rich-text-multiple-line-columns-with-visio-services/ ), and in this article I describe some of the possibilities of using the SharePoint Choice column type.

There are three different options for Choice columns in SharePoint 2013, but only the third, Checkboxes, allows for multiple selections.

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Announcing visViewer 4th edition … and why I did it

Sometimes I get really frustrated with Microsoft. They have a really great data-diagramming product with Visio, which they bought for the largest amount that they had ever paid for an acquisition at the time in 1999, but they have not succeeded in marketing the virtues of visual data to most of the Office community. I have always thought that one of the reasons for that is a misguided belief that you should not be able to make good use of Visio diagrams without purchasing Visio. My evidence for this is the lack of data, and sometimes hyperlinks, that are with each shape in the various outputs such as XPS, PDF, and Save As Web. For me, this is a missed opportunity because each of these formats could include data and multiple hyperlink support for each shape. Indeed, it should have been relatively simple for Microsoft to integrate Visio better with Word, Excel and PowerPoint … and I mean graphics and data, not just dumb pictures.

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Cleaning Visio Documents

A Visio user recently showed me a Visio 2010 document that could not be viewed with the Microsoft Visio Viewer. He could open it in Visio okay, but not in the viewer. Well I tried just removing the unused masters and styles, etc (of which there were quite a few), but that did not allow it to be viewed either. Then I tried the document.Clean() method, and, hey presto, the document could then be viewed. Unfortunately, the Clean() method is not available in the UI, so I have created a macro to make it more accessible.

The File / Info / Reduce File Size dialog shows that there are unused masters and styles :

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