bVisual

ShapeSheet Functions

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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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Using CODE() and UNICODE() functions in Visio

Microsoft Visio does have CHAR() and UNICHAR() ShapeSheet functions, just like Excel, but it does not have the inverse CODE() and UNICODE() functions, unlike Excel. However, there is a way to create a formula in the Visio ShapeSheet to provide these functions.

The following worksheet demonstrates how the CHAR(), CODE(), UNICHAR(), and UNICODE() functions work in Excel.

ColumnFormula
Indexn
Char=IFERROR( CHAR(INT([@Index])),””)
Code=IFERROR( CODE([@Char]),””)
Unichar=UNICHAR(INT([@Index]))
Unicode=UNICODE([@Unichar])
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Preventing Deletion of Container Members in Visio

The concept of Structured Diagrams was introduced in Visio 2010 and is featured in many of the templates supplied with Microsoft Visio, and in some third-party solutions, like mine. Connectors, callouts, containers and lists are the key parts of a structured diagrams, and there are times when preventing the deletion of members of a container or list is desirable.

  • An example cross-functional flowchart
  • Accidental deletion of a process shape
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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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Writing a WeekNum(…) function for Visio

I needed to display the week number of dates in a Visio project of mine, but there is no WeekNum(…) function built-in, so I had to write one, and allow for the date that the week numbers begin in to be varied from 1st January.  I also needed to allow for the week numbers to go backwards from the specified week number begin date.
Excel has a WeekNum(..) function, which can take an optional parameter for the day of the week to begin on, and an IsoWeekNum(..) function, and the following table shows the values change for the first 35 days of the year:
Excel Week Num Formulas
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Changing Visio Shape Size and Angle with Linked Data

I was recently laying out a computer room floor plan to scale in Visio, from survey data of the cabinets\racks within it, and it occurred to me that I could work a bit smarter than I first thought. Originally, I was going to just add lots of rectangles, size them, rotate them, and label each them with their name. Then I thought, why not use the Width, Depth and Name columns from the survey data to do most of the work for me? It was so simple to do, and only took a few minutes, so I thought I would share my methodology because it demonstrates how easy it is to work smarter with Visio….

These are the simple steps shown above, written out for your education….

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