A French user of LayerManager recently reported that the Refresh Counts button was not working for him, and a few other users were recently finding that the trial period was reporting expired immediately after download. Both of these issues have hopefully been addressed in the latest version 23.3.1, which is available for free to current users.
[Read more…] about Update to LayerManager add-in for non-English usersVisio
Pushing Data Visualizer in Visio to the limits!
Regular readers of my blog will know that I like to use the Data Visualizer (DV) in Visio Plan 2, but I recently tried to help a user who really decided to push it to the limits. In this scenario, there were multiple connections, but with different labels, being created between the same flowchart shapes, and the plea was how to make it work! Well, I experimented with this, and found that DV does not really work well in this way, and then proposed an alternative approach, which I will explain in this article.
First, I will show how it fails by setting up an Excel table that does contains multiple connections, but fails to update the labels consistently.
Teams Tuesday Podcast Recording about Visio
I am delighted to share the link to my recent demonstration and conversation with fellow MVP Peter Ward about Visio in Teams. We discussed more than just Visio … and I look a bit like Max Headroom!
Linking Data to Visio Shapes in Code
One of the most useful capabilities of Visio Professional and Visio Plan 2 is to link external data to shapes and have them refreshed by changes in the data source. So, many of my solutions involve writing code to make these links, and they are covered with some VBA examples in my book, Mastering Data Visualization with Microsoft Visio Professional 2016, but I mostly write C# code in VSTO add-ins, so I thought it would be useful to demonstrate how easy it is to create data links by dropping a shape, and by adding links to an existing shape. The book, by the way, is still relevant for the current Visio Professional and Visio Plan 2 editions!
Editing Visio Layer Colours with LayerManager
Desktop Visio has a tremendous ability to assign shapes to none, one or more layers, and the efficient use of them can make a drawing so powerful by toggling layers visibility or locking certain layers whilst working on other layers. The same drawing can be used, displayed or printed for many different purposes just by changing the layer settings. Visio layers can also have a color assigned, and its transparency, without affecting the original colors, so layers can be quickly set to grayscale, for example, to make other layers more visible, and bring attention to them. My LayerManager add-in for Visio has become quite a popular aid to working with layers, and now I have added layer color editing and multiple selection capabilities to the Page Layers tab!
[Read more…] about Editing Visio Layer Colours with LayerManager
Setting Theme defaults in Visio
I was recently asked how to change the default font size and line weight in Visio, and then saw then many others are asking the same sort of question. I found one reasonable answer suggesting that you should create a new document from your required template, then edit the Styles to suit, and then save as a new personal template. Well, I am not sure I like that answer because it means you must create a duplicate template for each one you use. So, I decided to see if I could find a better way…
Firstly, it is important to know that these default settings are not editable for the whole Visio application, because they are stored in each document, under the Styles collection. You can view the Styles in a document using the Drawing Explorer window that can be opened from the Developer tab.
