I have often linked Excel worksheets and ranges to Visio over the years. I used the Database Wizard initially, but have been using the Link Data to Shapes feature since Visio 2007. I had noticed that I sometimes didn’t get a full list of the available ranges when trying to link in Visio, so I decided to investigate why.
Firstly, I created a sample Excel 2010 worksheet with a header row, and three rows of data in Sheet1.
I have been using worksheets and ranges in Excel with Visio’s Link Data to Shapes (in the Pro and Premium editions) for several years, but recently encountered a problem with the recently added structured references in Excel. Fortunately, with the help of my colleague John Goldsmith, we found a solution.
Normally, I create tables in Excel worksheets with the column headings in the first row, so I could use the worksheet name in the Link Data to Shapes function in Visio. However, I wanted to have an extra row above the table headers for a recent project, so I wanted to use named ranges, defined with any rows above the table headers omitted. When I went to connect these ranges using the Data Selector in Visio, I found that all of my named ranges, except one (StepIds), were missing from the list of worksheets and ranges:
