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Thanks for the reply. It’s not an IT managed system. The checkbox survives a reboot and may remain checked for a random period of time, then becomes unchecked. I have tried unsuccessfully to identify an event that causes this. From my perspective it’s totally random but there must be a trigger I haven’t found. I think my solution is Office 2016 but I’m not quite ready to upgrade. I appreciate your help.

For those reading this who don’t understand what Naomi means by “Developer”, it means running Visio in Developer mode. Go to Options > Advanced and scroll to the bottom. Check the box that says “Run in developer mode”. This will add a tab to your ribbon with some very useful features. You don’t need to be a “developer” to benefit from the additional menus here.

Hi,
You’re asking several questions here. Let’s start with links to other programs. You can link to a file or document that is in one of the formats that Visio recognizes. For example, you can link to an Excel file and create a Hyperlink accessible with a right mouse click that will open that file. Without special programming, you cannot launch an application whose file type is not in Visio’s list. To create a Hyperlink, go to Insert > Hyperlink and browse to the file you want to open. You can also see the list of file types that Visio will recognize in the Link to File dialog box.

For linking spreadsheet data to objects that will update when the Excel file is modified, you must use Visio Data Linking. Go to Data > Link Data to Shapes and follow the wizard. Here’s an article that should help:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Link-data-to-diagrams-I-Getting-started-6b637f40-6231-4822-a81e-65d622fb8c13
There are good videos on YouTube as well. Search for “Visio data linking” and you’ll see them.

Updating Excel from Visio is another matter. That also requires special programming. If this is really important to you, my company Visimation specializes in Visio and can help but perhaps the one-way solution will suffice.
As for training sites, if you don’t want videos you can search Microsoft Office Online papers for help. There are many articles on specific topics like the one above that you can easily find with the appropriate search words.

The term you are looking for is “multi shapes”. Here is a link to an article that describes the concept and the methodology:
http://www.visguy.com/2008/11/10/visio-multi-shapes/
We create multi shapes at Visimation using our own custom automation. However, this article is a great tutorial on the concept.

Hi Naomi,
We specialize in Visio. There could be several reasons for the behavior you describe. If you’d like me to investigate, please send me a drawing (to “info at visimation dot com”) containing what you are referring to as a “compound shape” so I can look into it. I’m guessing you mean a “grouped” shape since “compound” is not a term in Visio.

Regards,
Brett Newman
Visimation Inc.

You need to enable “Developer Mode” to find the Behavior feature. Go to File > Options > Advanced and scroll down to the General section. Check the box next to “run in developer mode”. This will open another Visio menu item called Developer. You’ll find the Behavior feature about 2/3 of the way from left to right in the ribbon UI.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve used Visio 2003 so I can’t tell you if my comments apply to 2003 or just later versions. In 2007 and 2010 versions, you can set the duration units in the Gantt Chart Options dialog that apears when you open a Gantt Chart template or drop a Gantt Chart Frame shape on the page. It’s under Duration Options in that dialog.

Thanks for that link to the 64/32 bit question. Turns out I’m running 32 bit after all since the About box does not indicate 64. I was hoping that a switch to 32 would solve my problem. The browser rarely freezes to a point of a crash or re-start although that has happened… I can live with that occassionally. What’s really frustrating is that the browser will simply sit there, with a spinner in the tab indicating activity, for a long time and it seems random. It happens every few minutes as I work with it. When that occurs, I can’t do anything at all in the current tab or other open tabs until it stabilizes. The state lasts anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes and most often 30 – 60 seconds. In fact, it happened just now as I was working on this post when I tried to complete my reply. Sometimes I’ll get a message box at the bottom of the screen about the web site not responding… but not always (I can’t remember the actual wording of the message).

I saw a Susan Bradley article here that mentions problems with IE9 and banking sites. I’ve seen that myself although this isn’t restricted to banking sites. I checked the Advanced setting she referenced… mine was properly set so that eliminates it as a suspect.

I’ve tried disabling all add-ons except for those from Microsoft since I haven’t seen any posts about issues with them. I tried resetting to the original settings. Since neither approach solved the problem I’ve reinstalled the Google toolbar that I find very useful. It’s presence doesn’t seem to affect the situation one way or another.

I did just notice that the Yahoo toolbar is installed on my system although it doesn’t show up in my Manage Add-ons dialog. I’ll uninstall it and if it makes a difference I’ll post that here. I don’t understand how it can show in my Add/Remove programs box but not in the Add-ons but that’s why I missed it.

It sounds like you saved the drawing with the stencils closed. If you started the drawing from one of the flow chart templates, then you would have seen the stencils on the left. If you somehow closed those stencils and saved the drawing in that state then they won’t open. You can always click on More Shapes in that left hand box and open the stencils you want. Or, you can start a new flow chart from the template you want using the File page then New, and then copy your existing chart to the blank page of the new drawing spawned from the template. As long as you save the drawing with stencils open, they should reopen the next time you open the drawing.

There are several ways to do this but understand that the Org Chart shapes are locked down on the stencil to prevent people from breaking the automation in the Org Chart solution. You can still do what you want but it takes a bit of education. I’ll briefly guide you but you’ll also need to refer to the Help tools for details.

You can create a Shape Data set. Once you define it, you can then apply the fields you define to any shapes in your drawing.

Another method is to modify the shape on the Document Stencil. This is a hidden stencil that holds an icon for any shape that’s in the document space whether you can see it on your page or not. In fact, even if you add and then delete a shape the Document Stencil will still have an icon for it unless you actively delete it from the Document Stencil. For an explanation of this phenonmonon, please see our blog article here:
http://www.visiozone.com/?p=66

To see the Document Stencil you must be running in Developer mode in Visio 2010. That sounds scarier than it is. Click Fiile > Options and select Advanced on the left. Scroll down under General and check “Run in Developer mode. ” Now, go to the Developer tab in the ribbon and click on Document Stencil towards the right.

On the Doc Stencil find the shape you want to add Shape Data to. Double click to open its editing window and then add Shape Data fields as you normally would. Close and save the editing window. Now, all of your instances of that shape on your drawing will have the Shape Data fields that you added.

Hi Amanda,
Sorry this response is so late…
My company specializes in Visio. We developed UML training curriculum for Micorosoft that explains pretty much all you need to know about using Visio’s UML features. If you still need this I can send it to you in PDF format. Please contact me at brettn@visimation.com.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this feature has never worked well if at all. We’re Visio specialists and have not had any reliable success with the built in shape search feature. What are you trying to find? Our http://www.shapesource.com site offers thousands of network equipment shapes for free We have other categories as well for purchase. I may also be able to suggest other sources if you can tell me what you are looking for.

Another way to do this is with the Size and Position window that you can open with the View menu. Assuming all of the boxes are the same size, you can multi-select them either with a selection fence or by Shift clicking each individual box to select the ones you want. After your selection is complete, in the Size and Position window enter the new vertical and horizontal sizes you want. Be sure you hit Enter after the last entry while your cursor is in the S&P box, and all of the shapes will change to the new dimensions.

Perhaps I’m missing something here, but Visio has a tool for rotating 90 degrees clockwise and another for counter clockwise. It’s in the Actions toolbar that you can activate by right clicking in the toolbar area. Unless there’s a requirement I’m not inferring from the description, writing code for this is like killing a fly with a hammer. With the Actions toolbar you get the feature and the tool icons.