Visio shapes are often referred to as
SmartShapes because shape designers can add functionality to make them
more useful. A lot of these extra goodies go undiscovered, however,
because users don’t know where to look.
This section gives a rundown of the bonus features that a shape might possess and shows you where to find them.
Right-Click Actions
One
of my favorite tips for Visio users is to “right-click shapes like
there’s no tomorrow!” The context menu is one of the first places to
look to find custom actions that have been added to a shape.
Custom actions can trigger textual and graphical
changes to the shape, show and hide elements, change the way a shape
resizes, pop up dialogs, and even communicate with add-ins.
Figure 1 compares the right-click menus of four sample shapes.
The first rectangle in Figure 1
shows the unaltered menu for a default Visio shape. Compare it to the
other three, which have custom menu items—most of which are at the top
of the menu. Sometimes, custom items appear at the bottom, as the two
shapes with “Properties” illustrate.
Shape Data Fields
By now you are well aware that Visio shapes can
contain data. Many of the shapes that come with Visio are already
populated with Shape Data fields.
If
you want to see Shape Data fields, the Shape Data window needs to be
visible, and one or more shapes must be selected. If the window isn’t
visible, just right-click a shape and choose Data, Shape Data.
Alternatively, use the Ribbon and go to View, Show, Task Panes, Shape
Data.
Understand that Shape Data fields hold
data that can be purely informational or can affect the appearance of
the shape (see Figure 2).
You can manually edit fields or link them to external data. And you can
visualize shape data using Data Graphics if you have Visio Pro or
Premium.
