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Shape Data

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Using a formula for Shape Data labels prevents multiple updates

I have only been developing Visio solutions for 25 years, but I got a surprise this week when I was trying to understand why I couldn’t update the value of a Shape Data row of multiple selected shapes. It is something that I often do, so it took me a while to understand why I was failing to change the values, even though it appeared to initially change in the Shape Data window. There was no problem selecting the shapes individually, but every time I selected multiple shapes and edited these particular rows, I could see the new value in the Shape Data window, but as soon as I looked at the individual shapes, I could see that the values never got changed. I checked my code in vain, and ran the Events Monitor from the Visio SDK. Visio seemed to enter the Shape Data scope, but then immediately exited it without attempting to apply the new value to the shapes. Very strange!

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Forcing Display Update of Inherited Data Values

I was going to title this “When is a truth not a truth?” because I have found that Visio can sometimes refuse to apparently update the displayed value in a cell, even though it has been changed. However, this was, in this instance, down to a misunderstanding of the formula evaluation events on my part. Take the scenario where you have some data that you want to be available to all pages and all shapes in the Visio document. There are some built-in Document Properties in Visio that are accessible to all pages and shapes using ShapeSheet functions ( eg TITLE(), SUBJECT(), COMPANY(), Categories / CATEGORY(), Tags / KEYWORDS(), Comments / DESCRIPTION(), Author / CREATOR(), MANAGER() and HYPERLINKBASE()). However, Visio does not have custom Document Properties like the other Office applications. Instead, Visio allows for the addition of User-Defined Cells and Shape Data rows in the DocumentSheet of the document. These can be uniquely named, and Shape Data rows can be given a data type (of sorts), a label, prompt and format.

These values can be accessed via a ShapeSheet function from anywhere within the document, which ensures that you only have one version of the truth. However, there is no non-developer user-interface to edit these DocumentSheet Shape Data values in Visio, so what do you do? And how can you be sure that you are always seeing these centralised values correctly?

I created the following master shape to test how this can be done. It is a group shape that contains a single StartDate Shape Data row, which is used to edit or view the date in the similarly named Shape Data row in the DocumentSheet. For good measure, I also added a similarly named Shape Data row to the page, so the Shape Data window in the page could also be used. I then used Insert / Field to display the values in the ShapeSheet, PageSheet and DocumentSheet:

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Using 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 👀:

Windows 10 Onscreen Keyboard
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Using some Visio Shape Data in Visio for the Web

Like a lot of UK TV viewers last week, I watched Quiz, a drama about Major Charles Ingram who apparently cheated his way to the jackpot in Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Some of the questions that he was asked were quoted in that show, and I was surprised how easy the last two questions were for me, but that was probably because of my own education as a building architect. However, I decided to lookup the rest of the questions, and I would have fallen before getting to those questions unless my Phone-A-Friend could have helped me on one in particular. At the same time, I was thinking about the differences between Visio desktop and web editions (yeah, really!), so I have created a Visio document that contains all of the questions that the Major answered correctly. This document can be viewed by everyone and downloaded. If it is saved into OneDrive or SharePoint Online and then viewed online.

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Testing Visio shape text for WCAG 2.0 pass

The Web Content Access Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 provides the current recommendations for making web content accessible to users with vision impairment, but how do you test if your Visio shapes pass? There are several web sites out there that provide this capability, but all of them require the HEX values, rather than the RGB or HSL that Visio provides natively. Therefore, I have created a Visio callout shape that can be associated with a target shape to report on the values of each of its main color elements and provides hyperlinks to automatically check the contrast ratio on WebAIM.

Color Values Shape


The colour formats that can be selected from either the Shape Data window or the right mouse menu are:

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Multi-line text in Visio Shape Data

The Shape Data (nee Custom Properties) dialog and window only provides a single line to view or edit text values. It is a great shame because the value can be up to 64k characters, and long text can be pasted into it. I, and many others, have complained about this for many years to Microsoft, but nothing has been done to rectify this. Of course, I do develop custom user interface components for many customers, but that is not always desirable. Therefore I sometimes re-purpose standard Visio elements to provide the ability to view or edit multi-line text in Shape Data rows.

  • Description Shape Data row
  • Edit using ScreenTip or Action
  • Scrollable multi-line text
    Scrollable multi-line text
  • The first 248 characters are displayed on mouse hover
  • Simple ShapeSheet formulas to do this
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