I have a few Google alerts set up to let me know if the word Visio is mentioned on the internet. I am always interested in new stencils for Visio and this has proven an effective way of finding them. Most of the time, the hit has nothing to do with the product Visio or it was a link to a download site for Visio or one of the books written about Visio. Today was slightly different, there was a link to a blog that said "In Visio 2007, i want to change skin color, but I don't know the formula's

Debra Dalgleish, one of the Excel MVPs mentioned an old episode of the Computer Chronicles on Facebook and provided a link. It did not take me long to find an appropriate link for the Visio crowd. The show is about Windows 95 and OS2, but at 16:50 to 20:00 is an intro to Visio 3.1 http://www.archive.org/details/Windows4 Nice shirt Ted!

One of the posters in the newsgroup was asking about providing a revision date on each page of a Visio document and this is what I came up with. The only dates that are associated with a Visio drawing are done at the document level, so another apporach is necessary. To create a date stamp at the page level, add a custom property/Shape Data to the pagesheet for each page. This property can then be changed automatically when the page is altered. Since the property is updated automatically, the property

One thing that got me hooked on Visio from the beginning was that you were not limited to the shapes that were supplied by the product, You could create shapes from scratch, modify existing shapes or wrap an image from any source into a Visio shape. So, I am always on the hunt for new shapes that are available on the internet. Recently, I came across a set of well made shapes and was able to get in touch with the creator. Though the shapes looked good, they did not have any of the smarts that can

Visio has a problem with duplex printing. If you ask for multiple copies while duplex printing, you only get one copy. This is rather annoying, but the problem is not with duplex printing. The issue is with the collate option. You can duplex print a Visio document and request mutiple copies and your document will print the correct number of pages, only if you do not select collate. Of course, the pile of paper generated is useless. What is printed on the front and back of the first piece of paper

Have you ever wanted to add an area around a group of shapes? For example, you want to identify a group of computers that belong to the draughting department? Simple, you just draw a shape around a group of shapes, but the problem arises when you want to expand or shrink the shape that encloses the group of shapes. With Visio 2010, is a new concept called containers that will automatically stretch or shrink depending on the shapes contained.

Though not directly Visio related, I have been playing with converting the MSO shapes used in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher into Visio shapes. The shapes are similar to Visio shapes and include control handles. So far I have created a Visio stencil for the shapes and have added some of the smarts into the shapes. I have been able to create Visio drawings from MSO shapes in PowerPoint and transfer some of the settings for the shapes. The fun has been getting around the MSO*mixed types. (It

With Office 2007, the main apps introduced the ribbon and with Office 2010, Office introduced the ability to customize the ribbon. Since the ribbon was a major shift in the UI experience, it made sense that only the key apps should "test the waters" and the other apps should wait till the next release. It was basically a "too many cooks spoil the broth" scenerio. With Visio 2010, Visio acquired the Ribbon AND ribbon customization. One problem with menus in Visio 2007 was their

It has been almost two years since I blogged, so it is time to dust off the blog. Today in the newsgroups someone asked about using the Polar Array VBA sample from the Visio MVP website, but rather than place a specific shapes multiple times, arrange the shapes that are selected. As usual, the original credit goes to Chris Sub PolarArray() ' by Chris Roth Dim shp As Visio.Shape, shpObj As Visio.Shape, celObj As Visio.Cell Dim iNum As Integer, i As Integer Dim dRad As Double, dAngStart As Double

A recent post in the newsgroups asked about a stencil for IVR. IVR - Interactive Voice Response - is the system we have known to love as the automated telephone system - Press 1 for customer service rep, 2 for sales and so on. A VRU Voice Response Unit is the computer that runs the software. In a past life I maintained an IVR system for a bank and of course, documented it with Visio. Except for a few specialized shapes, most of the shapes were from the flowchart stencil. With Visio 2007, some of