I needed to check the maximum size of Visio pages for a current project of mine, so I devised a simple test with a diamond shape with its vertices pinned automatically to the edge of the Visio page, with text fields inserted in the center. I started with a standard A0 Landscape page, then multiplied the page width and height using the Page Setup dialog…
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Using an Updateable Default Font in Visio
I am working on a Visio project where the client wants to be able to configure the font used in each document. These documents have many custom masters, but the user can add there own annotations too. Therefore, I needed to find a way to synchronise the fonts used in both cases. Visio has Themes and Variants, and some of these built-in settings use different fonts, but there is no way of editing the fonts used in each theme since Office 2010 ( see Create a custom theme). There have been many questions on the web about changing the default font used in Visio, which is currently Calibri, but there were no easy answers found. Visio used to use Styles rather than Themes, and these capabilities are still there, but the buttons are not displayed in the default ribbon. However, the Drawing Explorer window does show the Styles and their hierarchies.
[Read more…] about Using an Updateable Default Font in VisioGetting the Microsoft Office Theme Value
I am working on a Visio VSTO project where I need to synchronise a UI element with the current session Microsoft Office Theme. At first, I thought that there would be some way of getting a value from the Visio object model, but I was wrong…
The Office Theme can be selected from either the Visio Options, or the Account Options panels.
[Read more…] about Getting the Microsoft Office Theme ValueUsing Emojis in Visio
In the new normal of social distancing, we can easily miss the nuances of facial expressions with the the various electronic communication platforms that we utilise. In our personal communications via mobile apps, we have all started to use Emojis to express sentiment and actions, although we can sometimes convey the wrong meanings unintentionally as some Emojis get re-purposed by certain sections of society. Microsoft Windows 10 added native support for Emojis a year ago, and they can be inserted into many Microsoft applications using the onscreen keyboard 👀:

My sessions at MS Ignite the Tour 2020 London
I was pleased to present two sessions at London ExCel last week about Visio. Attendance was good, maybe too good because some could not get close enough to hear. There was a lot of background noise, and my presentations were too long for the 15 minutes slot, but content was eagerly received.

I told everyone to download the slide decks, but I cannot find the link on the TechCommunity pages yet, so I have created my own links ….
[Read more…] about My sessions at MS Ignite the Tour 2020 LondonUsing Visio Org Chart Wizard to work with Exchange Online
I have used the Microsoft Visio Organization Chart Wizard many, many times over the years, but I usually use it from text files, and I had been aware that I was not getting good results from the Microsoft Exchange Server directory option, now that I use Office 365. I was always getting just the first Personnel record (Admin). Well, I was prompted to find out why, and was amazed to find the answer by Winnie Liang in Creating Organizational Chart from AD Information.
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