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Callouts

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When is a Visio Callout not a Callout?

I have been a Visio user/developer since the mid-1990’s and seen the word “callout” used as part of the name of many master shapes in Visio. The images below show five ways that the term “callout” has been applied to the name of Visio master shapes. Generally, each evolution has been an advance on the previous ones, or have becoome specialised for their usage … until Microsoft made “callout” shapes available in Visio web editions. These are not an advance in evolution, but are a radical regression, and in my opinion, quite unnecessarily basic, and extremely frustrating.

  • The original Callout shapes
  • The Custom Callout shapes
  • The Data Graphic Text Callouts
  • The Structured Diagram Callouts
  • Visio Web Callouts
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Fixing the Layers problem with Callouts in Visio

I recently re-discovered an issue with callouts in Visio for a couple of projects that I am working on, and so I had to find a fix. The problem is that the callouts become dis-associated from their target shapes if either the layer visibility of the callout or the target shape is toggled off, and then back on again. This will result in a diagram with shapes without any connected callouts, so moving any of the target shapes will not move their associated callouts with them! I initially came up with a workaround that involved some jiggery-pokery with sub-shapes and layers, but it seems that the problem could have easily been averted if Microsoft had incorporated one specific User-defined Cell from the very start…


First, I should be clear which callouts I am talking about because the word has been used and abused over the years … This article refers to the callouts that are inserted from the Insert / Diagram Parts ribbon group. These are part of the Structured Diagrams concept that was introduced with Visio 2010.

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Adding Configure Callout functionality to Visio Callouts

Visio is always improving but sometimes some functionality is hard to find, and gets forgotten about. For example, the Custom callout 1,2 and 3 masters on the Visio Extras \ Callouts stencil have been there for a few years, yet most users do not find them or realise what they can do. They provide the ability for a connected callout shape to display the values, and optional labels, of a target shape. This can be most useful for automatic annotations because they are always up to date. However, Visio recently introduced some new Callout shapes, but this ability is not there by default. In this blog, I show you how to add this useful feature to the new Callouts.

First, let’s look at the older Custom callout shapes, which automatically open a Configure Callout dialog when connected to another shape. This callout invites you to display selected Shape Data rows of the target shape:

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