What a week we just had! Microsoft invited three Visio MVPs and book authors to record 24 short videos on Visio. They will be published gradually over the next few months. We converged on Microsoft’s studios in Redmond from Boston, Germany and the UK for two days of intensive filming. It was enlightening, enriching and exhausting. The videos will only be a few minutes long each (apparently most online viewers can only last 90 seconds), but they cover a wide area of Visio uses, and contain a few good productivity tips.
[Read more…] about Visio Video Filming for Future ViewingVisio 2010
Page Grids and Off Page References
A recent question in the Visio 2010 Forums asked how to create a Complicated Off Page Reference; one that displays the page name and grid reference of the target shape. The questioner assumed that a macro would be needed, so I couldn’t resist seeing how much could be done without using macros.
This particular user wants his page to be divided into ten rows from 0 to 9, and eight columns, from A to H. In his case the rows are numbered from top to bottom, and the columns are from left to right. I decided to allow from 1 to 26 (the number of letters in the alphabet) rows and columns in my solution, and to allow for the row and column header text to be customizable.
My starting point is the useful Off-page reference master on the Basic Flowcharts Shapes stencil. This provides the ability to utilize a standard Visio add-on, OPC, so that two shapes on different pages can have reciprocal links.
Visio 2010 Container Problems
Update : I have received a corrected response from my friends at Microsoft regarding the use of Spatial Neighbors and Containers, so I have to revise this post from its original. The changes are marked in Red.
The Structured Diagramming API in Visio 2010 is really neat, but there are a couple of problems that I think you should be aware of. The first one is about how shapes can appear to be in a container, but aren’t really; and the second is how the Container type prevents SpatialNeighbors from working … unless you use a new constant.
Let’s start with an example diagram that contains three Process shapes on a Cross Functional Flowchart. Notice that I have select the Process shape labelled A and this has caused the swimlane Function 2 to display a brown highlight … this is a good indication that the Structured Diagramming
API is working, and that Function 2 is a container shape. I have placed two more Process shapes below the swimlanes, and one of them (C) is on top of a SubProcess shape.
Changing Embedded Visio Report Column Headers
Most Visio users should know that there is a built-in basic report writer. I use it often, but I do get frustrated sometimes. I wrote a chapter about it in my 2007 book (see https://bvisual.net/resources/visualizing-information-with-microsoft-visio/ ), where I explained how you can edit the XML of an external report to change the column headers, but this can be a bit of a pain if the report is embedded in you document. Therefore, I have written some VBA code to provide the ability to edit embedded report column headers.
For example, here is a standard report for equipment within a rack:
See my book at PacktLib Books On-Line
The publishers of my last book, Microsoft Visio 2010 Business Process
Diagramming and Validation (Packt Publishing), have put it on-line at http://packtlib.packtpub.com/library/9781849680141/ch02lvl1sec06
You can read chapter 2 for free, but hopefully you will pay for the rest of it 🙂
On-line publishing has at least three advantages over the printed copy:
1. It is in color (it is usually too expensive for printed books)
2. It is searchable
3. It is quickly available
You can also see a bit more via http://www.visiorules.com …
Visio 2010 Strengths and Weaknesses
My fellow Visio MVP, Chris Roth, and I have recently been interviewed by the renowned online magazine, The Register. You can read some of our thoughts at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/28/visualisation_visio_strengths_weaknesses/.