I have created many Visio solutions over the past 25 years and used a number of methods of creating an installation that includes Visio templates and stencils. I have just wasted many hours trying to debug an installation created with Advanced Installer until I realised that the problem was that Visio was not properly updating the cache of installed templates and stencils. In the end, the answer was to delete the cache and let Visio re-create it. The screenshots below show the custom shapes opened with the custom template and the More Shapes context menu. Before I deleted the cache, Visio incorrectly displayed the file name of some of the stencils (those with a trailing “_M” ) rather than the display name as entered into the PublishComponent table in Advanced Installer. In addition, the context menu did not show those stencils as being present in the workspace.
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Linking Data to Shapes in Visio after using Data Visualizer
Data Visualizer (DV) in Visio Plan 2 (Data | Create from Data | Create ) is great because it provides a way of automatically creating a diagram from data, but it also prevents some of the other data-linking features in Visio from being used. This is because DV wants to take control of the data in the shapes to provide refreshes from the data source or send updates to the data source. This can be very annoying if you use DV to create the initial layout, then you enhance this, so it looks just perfect, and then you just want to update some of the data without affecting the layout. DV may re-layout your carefully crafted diagram, even if there are no updates to the data that should do that. Also, you may want to integrate data from other sources that were not available or accessible to the table or query used for by Data Visualizer. This is when you may want to use Data | External Data | Custom Import which also provides a much greater number of data source types. In this article, you will learn how you can do this manually, or automate it with the help of a little VBA code (or similar).
In this example, I have used table of personnel that I have used before, but added an extra column, Shape Type, that simply has the value Rectangle, which is simply the name of a simple Master shape that I have added to my macro-enabled stencil, ExDataLinker.vssm.
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Counting glued and connected shapes in Visio
I got a surprise in one of my projects when I counted the shapes glued together using the Shape.GluedShapes(…) method … the sum of the filtered glued shapes just didn’t add up to the unfiltered count. So, I thought I should check the Shape.ConnectedShapes(…) method too … and there is a scenario where that has a similar result.
In the following diagram, I have different coloured squares with connection points of different types at the centre of each edge (as denoted by the connection type numbers), and one under a control point in the bottom left corner. I have glued the ends of coloured connector lines, statically (Red and Black) and dynamically (Green), and glued the Purple Square directly to the Orange Square. The Blue Square shape is glued to a connection point on the green dynamic connector.
I then ran some code to get the count of glued and connected shapes … and noticed some apparent discrepancies…
[Read more…] about Counting glued and connected shapes in VisioMy new book on Visualizing Processes with Microsoft Visio has launched
Back in the early 1990s, there was an application called ABC Flowcharter that was the market leader for diagramming business flowcharts, but some of the brains behind Aldus PageMaker saw an opportunity to create something smarter, and left to write the Visio product, with the stated aim to overtake ABC Flowcharter within 2 years. They did it in just 18 months and Visio expanded to cover more types of diagramming, especially organization charts and network diagramming. Visio became the default vector-based, data-diagramming application for the desktop, and so Microsoft acquired the company in 2000, who started to integrate it with Microsoft Office applications. Many imitators on the desktop tried to emulate Visio, but most fell by the wayside. There were constant requests for Visio to work on Apple Macs, but Microsoft resisted making a Mac specific version, and instead started to make Visio work in a web-browser, so it can work anywhere on any modern device. There are literally millions of lines of code on Visio, so it was never going to be straightforward or easy, but now we do have a light edition of Visio provided to all M365 business subscribers, and two extra subscription levels for more features and capabilities. We still have desktop Visio Standard and Professional, but the edition that straddles both the desktop and web is Visio Plan 2. It has some desktop only features delivered via web-services, and an enhanced browser-based editing experience. Visio Plan 2 is the edition for heavy or advanced users, but any of the desktop editions can be viewed as a design studio for content that can be used by the browser users because of Visio’s unique ShapeSheet feature that contains Excel-like formulas to control the properties of the shapes. Almost all of these formulas work in the web browser, but desktop Visio is required to write the formulas initially. This means that powerful customizations are possible without any web-scripting, and achievable by anyone who can write formulas in Excel!
So, this new book focuses on the original driver for Visio, process flowcharts, and explains how the different Visio editions can be used to create, edit, collaborate, comment, present, automate, export them, and finally how to customize them. Find out more at Visualize Complex Processes with Microsoft Visio!
Layer Set menu options and calls from code added to LayerManager
LayerManager for Microsoft Visio layer sets can now be called from external code and are also available from a sub-menu of the Layer Buttons drop-down ribbon button. The Layer Manager window does not need to be open to use the sub-menu because it detects the Layer Set buttons on the page.
Interactive Demographics of the European Union in Visio
I was recently contacted by a reader, Stanley M. Max (Towson University lecturer), who had started creating a Visio map of the 27 countries in the European Union in 2020, along with the demographics culled from Wikipedia. He wanted to know if the map and stats could be combined to make a more appealing presentation. Well, that prompted me to not only combine the data and country shapes, but to explore ways in which a presentation of the map can be made more interesting in Visio. So, I added data and hyperlinks to the shapes, and set up a page property for the selected country which automatically highlights the country shape, statistics, and header, to which I added flags. So, the user can either set the page country using the Shape Data window for the page, or context menu of each country, or simply by double-clicking.
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