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Macros

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Replacing Images in Visio Shapes by Changing Data

I wrote an article last year about Swapping Images in a #Visio Shape manually, but I want to be able to do this whenever a Shape Data value changes. This is because I use I invariably use shapes linked to data. I also want to be able to have multiple images within a single grouped shape, and all of them changing when their referenced Shape Data values change. I believe that this will be more adaptable for a lot of scenarios than trying to repurpose Data Graphic Icon Sets ( see  Make Your Own Visio Data Graphic Icons Sets … automatically). I also discovered that the Shape.ChangePicture(…) function can just as easily work with urls as it can with network file paths, so even more possibilities are opened up! For example, the Visio Online JavaScript API has the ability to overlay an image (see ShapeView.addOverlay(…)).
So, I have created some macros to provide quick and easy selection, positioning and updating of images within a group shape.

personphotosbydata


I decided to present this article with VBA code rather than my preferred C# so that a stencil could be downloaded to provide instant usability, rather than having to install an add-in. It can be download from Image Utils.vssm, and should then be placed in to My Shapes folder, so that it becomes available to open in Visio. When it is opened, then the macros will need to be enabled.
There are just five public macros:

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Dropping and Connecting Linked Data Shapes in Visio

I like linking data to shapes in Visio. It saves time in filling in Shape Data and adding text, or any Data Graphic to them. Basically I am lazy, and I also like to create macros for repetitive tasks, so in this blog I provide two macros to save the drudgery of two tasks I do so often:

  1. Dropping and data linking a number of items from an External Data recordset filtered by values in a column or columns
  2. Connecting shapes together following a parent-child relationship between Shape Data values
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Filter Visio External Data to Drop Shapes

I have recently been demonstrating how to automatically drop data point shapes into the correct latitude \ longitude position over a map image in Visio, and in this instalment I show how to automatically filter the dropped data points by a rectangular area. This will only work after calibrating the map image as in my previous article http://blog.bvisual.net/2015/05/26/calibrating-a-map-in-visio/ and then using the Data Point shape (or similar) from http://blog.bvisual.net/2015/05/27/distributing-data-points-automatically-on-maps-in-visio/

The principles of reading the Shape Data value from a selected shape to automatically drop rows from the active External Data window using the selected master shape could be applied to many scenarios.

image
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