- Visio - Quick Reference – Digital Content Factory Ltd.

August 26, 2022

- Visio - Quick Reference – Digital Content Factory Ltd.

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You can leave comments here on this blog post or at the bottom of each of the Quick Start Guide download pages. Microsoft Office is changing with the times. That is why we are reimagining Office, adding new apps to respond to new opportunities, and making Office a universal, interactive canvas for creators of all kinds. At Microsoft, we believe that the cloud will power the work of the future. Visio makes it easy to format the shape outlines and the connectors. You might be looking to format a shape outline to make it stand out from the rest of the shapes or to highlight something important.

To format a shape outline, click the shape or hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and select multiple shapes. This will open a Format Shape flyout. In the Line section, select the options you need to customize the shape outline. You can change the color of the shape outline, increase the width to add more weight, change the rounding, and a whole lot more. You can also create gradients for the line to suit the diagram.

Like shape outlines, connectors can also be formatted as needed. To format a connector, select the connector in the diagram and bring up the Format Shape pane by going to the Line dropdown menu and clicking Line Options In the Line section of the Format Shapes pane, select the Dash type of your choice to change the connector pattern.

You can also change the color of the connector and adjust the transparency levels as needed. Visio comes with visual aids to help align and structure the elements in the diagram so that it appears great both on-screen and in print. The main visual aids available include rulers, grids, and guides.

Rulers help in providing perspective to the elements in the diagram. They help orient the shapes to attain a consistent and clean look.

Rulers can be switched off or on with a simple checkbox in the Show section of the View tab. When you move a shape, you will notice that there are 3 dotted lines shown in the following example in red rectangles on both the vertical and horizontal rulers. These 3 dotted lines denote the left, middle, and right parts of the diagram. When you drag the shape vertically or horizontally, these 3 dotted lines help position the shape exactly at the place you need.

Guides are represented by lines, which appear thick when selected. You can delete a guide by simply selecting the guide and pressing the Delete key on the keyboard. Uncheck the Guides checkbox in the View tab to remove all the guides from view. Dragging a shape onto a guide will enable you to snap the shape to the guide.

When a shape is snapped to a guide, it moves along with the guide. Grids not only help to align shapes within the drawing but can also be an important measurement tool. Grids comprise of square boxes of defined area, which can be adjusted. Therefore, grids help you have an estimate of the likely area occupied by the shape, which allows you to size the shapes as needed.

You can also customize the size of each grid by adjusting the spacing between the grids. To do so, click the small downward facing arrow to the bottom-right of the Show section in the View tab. Apart from commonly used visual aids such as the ruler, guides, and grids, Visio also comes with few other visual aids to help you better organize your diagram.

One of the advantages of using SmartShapes is the ability to quickly and easily connect a shape to the top four favorite shapes. AutoConnect helps to quickly select a shape from the top four and instantly establish a connection to the new shape.

Sometimes, you might not need this feature. In such cases, you can disable the AutoConnect feature by simply unchecking the AutoConnect checkbox from the Visual Aids section of the View tab. When the AutoConnect checkbox is unchecked, the SmartShapes and connecting arrows do not appear when a shape is selected. Dynamic grid provides a relative alignment cue when you insert a new shape. When the Dynamic Grid option is turned on, you will see guides and indicators relative to the shape.

Dynamic Grid can be used in conjunction with the actual Grid. The actual Grid is more of an absolute measurement and should be considered when precise measurements are of importance in deciding the placement of the shapes. The Dynamic Grid is more of a relative measurement. In the above example, we see that turning on the Dynamic Grid allows us to see the relative distance of the new shape with respect to pre-existing shapes. Connection Points help in connecting shapes to specific points along the surface of a shape.

For example, a shape can have four Connection Points along its perimeter to which connectors can attach to. Turning on Connection Points help to connect shapes precisely at defined connection points. Connection Points can be identified by green squares that appear on all sides of the shape.

If you want to connect to the shape directly rather than to a connection point on the shape, uncheck the Connection Points checkbox in the View tab of the ribbon.

Task Panes provide additional functionality to the user interface. You can use task panes to customize or add parameters to an object. The Shapes pane which is there by default, is an example of a Task Pane. Task Panes can be floating or docked and can be resized as needed. Apart from the Shapes task pane, there are quite a few other panes, which can be accessed from the Task Panes dropdown menu in the View tab of the Ribbon. The Shape Data pane allows entry of additional shape metadata.

This metadata is contextual and depends on the shape being selected. This is especially useful while working with complex diagrams. This allows to set precise measurements of a shape. You can also change the angle of orientation of the shape and the pin position from which the measurements are to be considered.

The Navigation pane is available only in the Office version of Visio. It basically lists all the elements of the diagram and makes it easy to navigate to each of them. This is especially useful if the diagram has varied shapes and you want to navigate to a specific shape type.

Selecting the name of the shape in the Navigation pane selects it in the canvas. It is easy to work with multiple windows or multiple versions of a document in Visio. You can switch between windows easily or arrange them side by side for a comparative look. The options for window rearrangement can be found in the Window section of the View tab. New Window basically allows to create a new copy of the existing window.

The new copy will not show the stencils directly, however, they can be selected by clicking the More Shapes arrow in the Shapes pane. The new window can be identified by the presence of a number in the title bar of the window. In the following example, the original file name was BlkDiagm.

Using the New Window command creates a new window with BlkDiagm: 2 in the title bar. This function allows you to arrange all windows side by side. This feature is useful for comparing two windows, however, if you have a high-resolution display, you might be able to accommodate more windows beside each other.

The Shapes pane and other panes can be minimized to allow more screen real estate. This function allows cascading of windows to give an overall view of the open windows. The active window is in the foreground, while inactive windows are in the background with title bars visible. Cascade view is useful to know which documents are open at a glance.

The right side of the Print menu shows a preview of the output. You can change the orientation of the page, page size, and select only the pages that you need to print. Depending on your printer, you can also print in color or in greyscale. Remember that printing in black and white might not produce a good output.

Visio includes several ways to create a PDF of the drawing, which is extremely useful for sharing with others. You can save the drawing as a Visio drawing.

This opens the Save As dialog box. You might want to use this if you need to have fine grain control over the PDF document such as PDF version or compatibility properties. You can also directly email the diagram to a recipient.

This creates a new email in your default email client with the PDF file readily attached. Just enter the email address of the recipient to send the attachment. Exporting image formats is useful while sharing the drawing easily with others or to put it up on a web page.

To export a drawing, go to the File menu, click Save As and in the Save As type field, choose from the list of supported formats.

You can choose from any of the abovementioned graphics formats. Once you choose a graphics format to export to, you will get some options to choose from depending on the capabilities of the graphic format. The options in the Operation and Color format fields are format specific. You can leave them mostly as default. Set the Background color as white if you have a background for the drawing. Set the Quality as needed.

You can also rotate the drawing or flip it horizontally or vertically. The resolution and size of the output diagram can be matched with the screen, printer, or source. You can also input a custom resolution or size. Click OK. You can also export drawings to web pages which can be hosted on a web site. Visio allows customizing what goes into the web page. You can select which of the components of the diagram that you want to publish and the number of pages to publish.

You can also provide a page title. The HTML file is created in the chosen location along with a folder containing the supporting files. Both the HTML file and the folder are linked together. Adding SmartShapes automatically creates layers. Layers are basically overlays, which can be individually customized and turned on or off.

Each shape and connector in the diagram forms a layer whose properties can be customized. To know the list of layers in the diagram, in the Editing section of the Home tab, click the Layers dropdown menu and click Layer Properties This opens the Layer Properties dialog box, which you can use to customize the different layers in the diagram.

The Layer Properties dialog box lists the different layers in the document and allows changing the individual properties of the layers. Layers are automatically assigned to shapes. However, Visio allows to assign layers to shapes as needed.

You can also create your own layers. Let us start by creating a new layer and then assign some shapes to the new layer. Go to the Layer Properties… dialog box in the Layers dropdown menu from the Editing section of the Home tab and click New… Type a name for the new layer. The new layer will be created in the Layer Properties dialog box and will initially have zero shapes, as they are yet to be assigned.

Shapes can be assigned to any layer. To assign a shape to a layer, click the shape or connector in the diagram and then, click Assign to Layer in the Layers dropdown menu from the Editing section of the Home tab. It opens the Layer dialog box from which a shape can be assigned to either an existing or a newly created layer. Note that the New Layer that was created earlier is now in the list. A shape can be assigned to more than one layer as well.

To assign a shape to all the layers in the document, click All and then click OK. The Layer Properties dialog box allows to change the properties of individual layers.

The Name field lists the type of layer, while the field lists the number of shapes in that type. In the following example, we see that there are nine equipment shapes in this diagram.

There is a row of checkboxes for each layer type that can be selected or deselected. Unchecking the Visible checkbox makes the shape invisible in the drawing. If the Print checkbox is checked, the shape will be printed along with the others. Unchecking the Print checkbox will not print the shapes in the layer. Similarly, layers can be made active or locked. Shapes in an active layer can be manipulated without affecting the other shapes or layers. When you lock a shape, Visio prevents any changes from happening to the shape.

You cannot drag the shape or change its contents. Snap and Glue will be checked, if the shapes are allowed to snap to a grid. You can also represent a layer by a color for easy recognition. When you represent a layer by its color, the shapes belonging to that layer will also be colored in the diagram.

This is useful if you want to differentiate a set of shapes from another. Themes and Styles are useful to give the diagram a design makeover and make it stand out.

Visio provides a standard set of themes and styles, which are customizable. Themes apply to the entire diagram. Themes comprise of a set of colors and effects that generally blend well with each other. They are a great way to quickly give the diagram a polished look. Themes also affect other parts of the document such as titles, headings, text, etc. To apply a theme, go to the Design tab and select a theme from the Themes section.

The dropdown arrow provides more choices categorized by theme type. When you click a theme, all the aspects of the diagram and other parts of the document reflect the theme settings. A theme can have many variants, which can be selected from the Variants section of the Design tab.

Styles are different from themes such that, they are applicable to a selected shape or a group of shapes. Styles help in customizing the aspects of a particular style. To change a style of a shape, select the shape and from the Home tab, then select a style from the Shape Styles section. Style can be applied to both shape elements in the diagram as well as to individual text boxes.

You can select multiple shapes to apply the style to all of them together. When you change a theme after applying a style to a shape, the shape will take up the characteristics of the theme but will still remain distinct from other shapes. Of course, you can continue to customize the style even after applying a theme. Themes are useful to customize the appearance of the document.

Visio goes a step further and allows to customize the themes themselves. Themes come with variants that can be further customized as needed. Theme variants can be accessed from the Variants section in the Design tab. You can use the stock variants or click the dropdown menu to customize many other aspects. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to prevent themes from affecting one shape or a group of shapes, especially if they have important information that has to be presented in a particular way.

To enable protection for a shape, click a shape or a group of shapes. This opens the Protection dialog box that allows to select which components of the shape to protect from being overridden.

We will focus on protecting the theming of the shape for now. So, select the checkboxes for Text, Format, From theme colors, From theme effects, From theme fonts and finally, From theme index.

If you now select any theme from the Design tab, you will notice that the shape that is protected is unaffected by the theme change. To reverse the changes, simply go to the Protection dialog box again, click None and finally click OK.

Visio comes with a good selection of themes and variants to suit almost any need. However, sometimes you might have the need to create a specific color scheme that reflects your organization.

To do this, select a theme from the Design tab and choose a variant from the Variants section that closely matches to what you intend to create. In the New Theme Colors dialog box, give a name for the theme in the Name field. There are 5 accent colors to customize. Depending on the colors that you want to customize, choose a color for each accent. Click Apply to see a preview of the effect. Once you are satisfied with the color scheme, click OK to save the color scheme.

The new color scheme can be found in the Custom section of the Colors menu. You can always edit this color scheme by right-clicking the custom scheme and clicking Edit. Organization charts or org charts are a great way to depict hierarchy in an organization. Visio provides ready-made templates to help you get started in creating org charts. In the following series of chapters, we will learn different aspects of creating and working with org charts.

The easiest way to get started is to use an inbuilt org chart template and build upon it. In Visio , the org chart template can be found by going to the New menu. Click the Home button, click New and select the Templates tab.

In the Templates tab, go to the Business category and click Organization Chart. It will open a dialog box in which you can choose the chart to be created in either Metric or US units.

Select the units you are comfortable with and click Create to load the org chart shapes in a new diagram. Once the chart is created, you will notice that the Ribbon has a new Org Chart tab that lists the shape styles you can use. The Shapes pane has all the shapes necessary to use in a org chart.

The shapes change based on the shape style selected in the Org Chart tab in the Ribbon. In this example, the currently selected shape style is Belt. To insert a top-level shape, drag the Executive Belt shape over to the canvas and align it to the center of the page. Once the top-level executive shape is created, it is easy to create manager sub-shapes.

The Executive Belt shape will not offer SmartShapes as this is a hierarchical chart with defined positions. To insert a manager, simply drag the Manager Belt shape onto the Executive Belt shape. You will notice that Visio automatically connects both the shapes. You can add more Manager Belt shapes onto the Executive Belt shape and Visio will automatically connect, space, and align all the shapes. You can then enter details into the shapes by zooming in and double-clicking the shape to activate the text box.

Unlike the Executive Belt shape, the manager shapes will offer the choice of using SmartShapes. We can continue building on the org chart previously created. Based on the organizational hierarchy, corresponding shapes can be added to the existing shapes. Visio will then automatically create the connection and align the new shape in the diagram.

A position belt is used to indicate a position under an executive. In the following example, several position belts have been added to each of the three manager sub-shapes. To add a position shape, simply drag the Position Belt shape from the Shapes pane over any of the manager sub-shape.

Visio automatically creates the Position Belt shape and connects it to the manager shape above. In an organization, not all positions will be always full.

There will be a few vacant positions that need to be filled. You can indicate a vacancy by dragging the Vacancy Belt shape onto any of the managerial shapes. A vacancy shape is different from the other shapes and can be easily identified.

Similarly, you can also add the consultant and assistant shapes to the org chart. Visio will automatically adjust the spacing and connections between the shapes. It may be necessary to re-order team members in the org chart. Since this is an org chart, there will be an Org Chart tab in the Ribbon. Click the tab and in the Arrange section, click either of the arrows in the Move command. Depending on the position of the shape in the drawing, moving left and right can also mean moving up and down.

When you move a shape, all sub-shapes also move along with it. In the following example, the COO shape was moved to the right and with it, all positions below it also move. A team frame helps to denote members of different teams who work on a common project. To add a team frame, drag the team frame shape from the Shapes pane onto the teams that you want to include. The team frame can be adjusted along its handles to accommodate as many members as needed.

The team frame border line and the label can be formatted as needed. To format the team frame border, click the team frame and go to the Home tab and in the Shape Styles section, select the shape formatting needed. A dotted line report helps in identifying individual team members who report to multiple people. To add a dotted line, drag the Dotted-line Report shape from the Shapes pane onto the canvas.

You will see that there are two endpoints to the dotted line. Drag one of the endpoints to the first shape and the other endpoint to another shape to create a dotted line that indicates the team member reports to more than one position. Although you can create individual shapes by dragging the desired shapes from the Shapes pane, Visio facilitates creating multiple shapes at one go. All shapes added together will be automatically connected and aligned.

To create a three-position SmartShape, drag the Three Positions shape onto any of the higher manager shapes. This creates three shapes directly below the higher shape. You will notice that the shapes can spill over onto the next page.

Similar to a three-position SmartShape, Visio also helps to create a multi-position SmartShape in which you can select as many positions as you want.

To create a multiposition SmartShape, click and drag the Multiple shapes from the Shapes pane onto a selected shape on the canvas. It opens an Add Multiple Shapes dialog box in which you can select the type of shapes and the number of shapes to be added. Click OK to add the shapes to the selected shape. You can add pictures to different levels in your org chart to make it more visually appealing. To add executive pictures, double-click the shape to zoom into it and then click the picture field within the shape.

Then click the Insert button to select a picture for adding into a shape. After adding an image, you can use the usual picture formatting tools to adjust the brightness and contrast or crop the image.

If you want to automatically import executive pictures into their respective hierarchies, simply make sure the file names of the executive pictures match that of the names in the shapes. Synchronization allows any change made to the executives in other pages to remain in sync with the main page.

This opens the Create Synchronized Copy dialog box, which allows to create a copy of the shape and its subordinates on a new or an existing page. Click the Hide subordinates on original page checkbox, if you want to collapse the shape on the main page. Any changes made on the synchronized shape pages will be seen on the main page as well.

Individual manager shapes can be collapsed and shown as needed. Collapsing shapes is useful to reduce the clutter in the diagram. To collapse the hierarchy under a shape, right-click a shape, go to the Subordinates menu and click Hide Subordinates.

The subordinate shapes then collapse under the manager shape. This is indicated by a tree icon under the manager shape. If the shapes are synchronized, any changes made to them elsewhere will be automatically reflected in the main shape. To reveal the subordinates again, right-click the manager shape, go to the Subordinates menu and click Show Subordinates. Although you can manually create the org chart using different shapes in the Shapes pane, Visio also provides an automated way of importing information about your organization from an external source.

In this chapter, we will look into importing data from information in an Excel spreadsheet. Create an Excel spreadsheet or use an existing one containing some of the important information in the header row that goes into creating an org chart. Important information includes Employee, Title, Manager and Department. The Employee and Manager fields are mandatory and the others are optional. There are two ways of starting the Organization Chart wizard. The first method involves using the Organization Chart Wizard from the Templates section in the New menu.

The other method is to use the Import command in the Organization Data section from the Org Chart tab in the Ribbon, if you have already created an org chart. The second method is recommended if you need the background formatting to carry over onto all the pages in the org chart.

The first method creates all the pages required, but you need to individually format each page, which can get tedious if your organization is large. Either ways, the Organization Chart Wizard appears in which you can specify the features of your org chart. The first screen of the Organization Chart Wizard gives the option of either selecting the existing information from a file or manually entering information. For this example, we will choose the first option. Click Next to proceed to the next screen in the wizard.

In the following screen, you can choose the source in which the organizational information is stored.

Select the second option and click Next. In this screen, in the Name field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that contains the name of the employee. In the Reports to field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that denotes the reporting manager. If the name and first names are in different fields, specify the field containing the first name of the employee in the First name dropdown.

Visio will combine the name and first name fields to generate the full name of the employee. Click Next to continue. The Data File Columns box lists all the data fields that are present in the header of the Excel file. You can select the fields that you need to be displayed in the Displayed Fields section by selecting the required fields and then click Add. Click Next, once the desired fields are added. In the next screen, you can choose the fields the shape data should be based on.

The shape data fields will be similar to the fields selected in the previous step so in most cases, you can leave it as such. You can also add any additional fields if needed. In the following screen, you can choose to include pictures of the employees. If you have labelled pictures in the same format as the employee names, you can point to the location of the folder containing pictures of all the employees. Or you can simply choose not to include any pictures. In this screen, you can choose how much of organization info can be displayed on one page, if there are many employees spanning many pages.

You can also choose to allow Visio to automatically break the org chart across pages. Make sure that Hyperlink employee shapes across pages and Synchronize employee shapes across pages are selected. Click Finish to finally create the org chart. After clicking Finish, Visio will start processing information from the Excel spreadsheet and create the org chart based on the parameters specified in the wizard. You will see a progress indicator showing the status of the creation. The completed org chart can be saved as a PDF or any of the image formats by going to the File menu and clicking Save As.

Select from any of the file types in the Save As type field. If you save the drawing as a JPG or GIF file, you will get another dialog box, which allows to further specify the output options.

A brainstorming diagram is similar to an org chart but is used more to convey different ideas about a topic.

To create a brainstorming diagram, click File and go to the New menu. In the Templates section, select Business, and then in the list of templates, select Brainstorming Diagram, choose the desired units to work with and click Create. You will notice that the brainstorming diagram document is created and ready to use. This has a few notable differences compared to the org chart. Firstly, the number of shapes are lesser than an org chart. Secondly, there is an Outline Window that appears in the drawing showing the outline of the diagram.

Thirdly, there is a Brainstorming tab added to the ribbon, which contains tools required to use the brainstorming diagram. To create the central topic for the brainstorming diagram, drag the Main topic shape onto the canvas. Unlike the org chart where you had to double-click the shape to enter text, you can start typing text in a brainstorming diagram as soon as you drag the shape onto the canvas. In this chapter, we will learn how to add, edit and place subtopics in the brainstorming diagram using Visio.

In a brainstorming diagram, sub-shapes are not directly inserted on top of the main shape. A sub-shape is inserted as a subtopic. To insert a subtopic, first click the Main topic shape and then click the Brainstorming tab on the Ribbon. In the Add Topics section, click Subtopic. You can also create multiple subtopics at once by clicking the Multiple Subtopics in the Add Topics section. This opens the Add Multiple Topics dialog box, where you can enter the names of each of the subtopics.

Subtopics can be edited simply by clicking the title of the subtopic and typing over it. You can also edit a subtopic by clicking its name twice in the Outline Window.

The Outline Window represents the topic hierarchy of the brainstorm. The subtopics can be dragged by their connectors and placed anywhere on the canvas. They will always be linked to the Main topic shape.

The Outline Window makes it easy to edit the order of topics or topic names in the diagram. Any changes made in the Outline Window will be readily reflected in the actual diagram. The Outline Window can be pinned or unpinned by clicking on the push pin icon to the bottom left of the window. This enables the window to auto-hide when not in use. Topics can be edited by clicking twice on the topic name within the window and typing. The order of the topics can also be changed by clicking and dragging the topic from one subtopic into another.

You can also right-click a topic and Move Up or Move Down to change the order of the topics. To delete a topic, right-click a topic and then click Delete Topic or simply select a topic and press the Delete key on the keyboard.

You can customize the brainstorming diagram in a similar manner to other types of diagrams by changing the shape, style, and layout. The shapes of individual topics can be customized into a variety of built-in shapes. Hold down the Shift key, select the topics one by none and in the Brainstorming tab, click Change Topic in the Arrange section. This opens the Change Shape dialog box, which lists the shape types you can change to. Select a shape type and click OK.

The brainstorming diagram can be customized by choosing different themes and theme variants. To choose a theme, go to the Design tab on the Ribbon and select a theme. You can also choose different variants for the theme by selecting a variant in the Variants section. The Variant section has a dropdown using which you can further customize the colors and effects such as drop shadows.

You can also customize the style of the diagram so that it looks more elegant and professional. You can choose from a variety of brainstorming styles and also a couple of mosaic options, which includes a mix of all the styles. Select a style and click Apply to see the result. Click OK to close the dialog box. You can also customize the layout by clicking Layout in the Brainstorming tab. Select a layout from the Select a layout section. You can also choose the type of connector in the Connectors section.

Select a layout and click Apply to see the result. You can send brainstorming data directly to Word and Excel and in fact, to any program that accepts XML input. Any changes can be saved to this XML file, which can then be imported back into Visio. Note that these options are available, only if you have the versions of Word and Excel installed on your computer. In Excel, the data is organized into topic levels. For example, T1 represents the main topic, T1.

You can add or remove topic hierarchies here and save the XML file, which can then be reimported back into Visio. Similar to org charts and brainstorming diagrams, you can also create timelines in Visio to depict a schedule or a series of events.

To create a timeline, go to the New menu in the File tab and click Templates. Go to the Schedule category, click Timeline and then Create to create the timeline workspace.

Since the timeline essentially measures time, units selection is inconsequential. Once the Timeline template is created, click and drag the Block timeline shape from the Shapes pane onto the canvas.

This opens a Configure Timeline dialog box, where you can select the duration for the timeline and the Timescale. Click Ok. Milestones represent specific points in time during which an important event has occurred or is scheduled to occur. To add a milestone, click and drag the Line Milestone shape onto a chosen interval on the timeline. It need not be dropped exactly on a specific interval, since you can manually configure the exact date and time of the event.

When you drag the milestone onto the timeline, the Configure Milestone dialog box appears, where you can specify the exact date and time of the milestone along with a description of the event. You can also choose from the standard date formats to better represent the time and date. Click OK to create the milestone on the timeline. The milestone can be dragged along the timeline, and the date and time of the milestone will be updated accordingly. When adding many milestones, it is possible that the description text of the milestones will run into each other creating a messy look.

It is possible to avoid collisions by changing the position of the milestone text. If you happen to have a colliding text, simply grab the yellow end of the milestone and drag to a separate position, such as the bottom or higher up.

You can also angle the yellow end by simply turning your mouse to a desired angle. Once the yellow end is dragged and released, the Line milestone shape adjusts itself accordingly. You can also use the guides to glue the yellow ends of multiple milestones so that they are all aligned.

An interval denotes a block of time over the course of which an event occurs or is scheduled. To add an interval, drag the Block interval shape onto a location on the timeline. It opens the Configure Interval dialog box.

In the Configure Interval dialog box, you can select the duration of the interval, the date format and add a description.

Click OK to add the interval to the timeline. Intervals can overlap milestones or other events. By formatting the interval shape to make it transparent, any other shape behind it can be made visible. Markers and indicators can be used to denote specific events such as current date or elapsed time. Markers help to gain a perspective of where you currently stand with respect to your objectives in the current timeline. You might want to adjust the yellow end to ensure that the marker text does not overlap with your milestone or other information.

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Skip to main content Skip to main content. You also get an idea of the relative dimensions of all the other shapes indicated by green arrows when you try to change the dimensions of any shape. To open a file in Visio, go to the File menu, which opens the backstage view and click Open. The Recent section lets you directly access the recent drawings that you have opened or saved. Based on your setup, the Open menu lists some of the file locations that you can browse for Visio drawings.

Alternatively, click Browse and select the Visio drawing from a local or network folder. Visio files have the extension. Once you open a Visio drawing, you will see that the user interface changes according to the drawing. In the following example, we have opened an org chart and you can observe that the shape stencils corresponding to the org chart are now available in the Shapes pane. In case of this file, you will also notice an Org Chart tab in the Ribbon that gives you additional options for working with the shapes in the chart, and also allows linking the shapes to data from external sources such as Excel.

You can adjust the spacing between individual shapes and also change the height and width of all shapes in one click. The Compare command in the Organization Data section of the Org Chart tab lets you compare the contents of this org chart with another org chart or diagram open in Visio.

The output is generated as an HTML file, which lists out the similarities and differences between the two diagrams. You can show or hide elements in the UI to whatever suits you best. The Quick Access Toolbar allows you to easily add often-used commands so that they are always available within reach. Apart from the standard Undo, Redo, and Save commands, you can add additional buttons, such as a toggle between Touch and Mouse mode depending on your display by clicking the arrow icon in the Quick Access Toolbar.

You can also add more commands by clicking the option More Commands The Ribbon can be collapsed to allow more real estate for the canvas. You can reduce or expand the Shapes pane by clicking and dragging the edge of the pane inwards or outwards respectively. The Ribbon can be customized just like the Quick Access Toolbar but to do so, you need to navigate to the File menu and click Options.

Then click Customize Ribbon. You can select the tabs that you wish to display on the workspace. You can also create a new tab or group by clicking New Tab or New Group to accommodate the commands that you use frequently. Visio has a few options for changing how you view the drawing. The View tab lists all the possible view options that you can use on the canvas.

We will look at some of the commands that are useful in changing view modes. Basically, slide snippets allow you to directly export a Visio diagram as a PowerPoint slide. To take a slide snippet, click the Slide Snippets Pane in the View tab to open it.

Then, select an area of the drawing that you want to export to a PowerPoint slide and click the Add button in the Slide Snippets Pane. Add a title in the Enter title here The Presentation Mode shows a full screen view of the drawing without any distractions. This mode can also be toggled by pressing F5 on the keyboard.

You can toggle between showing the vertical and horizontal rulers, the grid, and the guides by toggling the corresponding checkboxes in the Show area of the View tab. The scaling of the rulers and grid can also be adjusted.

The grid allows to easily snap objects so that they are placed correctly on the canvas. The Zoom section comprises of commands that allow you to change the zoom levels of the canvas.

You can also fit the contents to window or adjust the contents to fill the page width. The Window section lists commands that allow to arrange multiple windows on your screen.

You can directly open a new window or arrange windows side by side. You can also cascade windows for easy switching between them. SmartShapes provide contextual shapes which relate to the selected shape. SmartShapes are connected to the original shape and the connector also moves whenever the SmartShape is moved. Start with a blank document in this case a flowchart diagram. You will notice that the Shapes pane has different shapes that are applicable to flowcharts.

Click and drag a shape onto the empty canvas. You can resize or rotate the shape as desired. You can even align the shape with the help of the alignment guides. When you drag a shape onto the canvas, you will notice that there are four arrows along the shape. Hovering over any of these arrows will show possible shapes that can be created and linked to this shape. Click the desired shape to create the shape. You will also notice that the shape is automatically connected to the initial shape.

If you were to drag the shape manually, you will need to connect it manually as well. The connections between the shapes are dynamic and they will move in relation to the placement of the shape. The SmartShape arrow lists the first four shapes for the diagram that are seen in the Shapes pane. You might want to customize which shapes appear in the four SmartShape options depending on your workflow.

To set the shapes that you prefer as SmartShapes, first select the desired shape in the Shapes pane and drag it to one of the first four shapes within the pane. In this example, let us assume that the Database shape needs to be in the first four. Click and drag the Database shape into one of the first four positions. SmartShapes allows to automatically connect shapes. If you want to connect shapes that are not directly related, you can manually connect them.

To manually connect shapes, click the Connector tool in the Tools section of the Home tab. The mouse pointer now changes into a connector. Draw a connecting line from the originating shape to the destination.

You will notice a dotted line representing the connector. You can either glue this connector to the connection point or glue it to the destination shape. Gluing it to the shape will enable you to move the shape to a different location on the canvas along with the connector. Click the Pointer Tool in the Tools section of the Home tab to return the mouse pointer back to normal. Newer versions of Visio have built-in intelligence to help you place shapes between other shapes.

Visio automatically adds the required spacing and connectors to ensure that the new shape is inserted in the correct position.

To insert a shape between two shapes, drag the new shape in between the desired shapes, till you see green squares on the connectors and release the mouse. The new shape will be inserted with equal spacing and appropriate connections.

Often, inserting and deleting shapes can disturb the alignment of the diagram. It can also make the elements of the diagram space out unevenly. To get around this, Visio provides tools that automatically align and space the shapes in your diagram so that it looks perfect.

To automatically align and space shapes in a diagram, go to the Position dropdown menu in the Arrange section of the Home tab. You can also hover the mouse on these commands to preview how the diagram would look after alignment. Visio provides options for automatically changing the layout of the diagram with the ReLayout Page command. The Re-Layout Page command provides commonly used layouts. You can also customize some of the aspects of the layout as needed. Open the diagram and navigate to the Design tab on the Ribbon.

Click the Re-Layout Page dropdown menu and select a layout as needed. You will see that the diagram now changes to the selected layout. You can also preview the look before clicking by hovering the mouse over the layout style.

This opens a dialog box in which you can configure the layout properties. You can change the spacing between the shapes by manually changing the values in the Spacing field.

You can also change the appearance of the connectors to curved by selecting Curved in the Appearance dropdown menu. Remember to select the Apply routing style to connectors checkbox to be able to change the appearance of the connectors. Visio allows inserting text either within the shapes or in the document. You also get to do text formatting just like any other text editor. It is easy to insert text within a shape.

Just double-click within a shape to type the text. Notice that Visio automatically zooms into the shape to enable typing and zooms out when you click outside the shape. To insert a text in a document such as a heading for the chart, click the Text Box dropdown menu in the Insert tab on the Ribbon and select either horizontal or vertical text box.

Backgrounds are inserted using pages called background pages. Background pages can contain graphics or text such as copyright info and other information. Background pages are always separate but appear overlaid on the main page. You can change the background of a document by choosing from preset backgrounds or using your own background template. To insert a background, click the Background dropdown menu from the Design tab on the Ribbon and choose a background preset.

This creates a new page in addition to the diagram page. You can right-click the newly created background page to rename it. The new background will be automatically applied to all newly created pages in the document.

Apart from the shapes that are part of the diagram, you can add your own images to the document. Images can come from any online or offline source. If you add an image to the background page, the image will appear on all the pages in the document. To insert your images or graphics, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and select from any of the commands in the Illustrations section.

It can be a picture on your local drive, an online source, a chart or even a CAD drawing. You can also replicate the picture on all the pages by inserting the picture in a background page. To do this, select the background page and insert the picture as described above. Drag and resize the picture as needed. Now, navigate to the page containing the diagram and you will find that the picture appears on that page and any other subsequent pages that are added.

Sometimes, you might want to combine two or more elements of the diagram together. You can use containers to group shapes that are dependent on each other. Callouts help in inserting more text outside the shape. Callouts are always connected to the shape and move along with it. To insert a container, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Container dropdown menu in the Diagram Parts section.

You will see that there are many designs to choose from for the container. Once you select a design, you can drag the container around the grouped shapes. Release the mouse to lock the container. The container also contains an area for typing text. Double-click the heading area to type the text. Select the shape for which you want to use the callout. To insert a callout, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Callout dropdown menu in the Diagram Parts section.

You will see that there are many designs to choose from for the callout. Select a design appropriate for the callout.

The callout will appear connected to the selected shape. In this example, we have added a callout for the Back to Research process called Extensive Research.

The callout is linked to the shape and can be moved about anywhere in the drawing, however it will always stay connected to the shape. Visio will zoom in when you click the callout to enable typing and will zoom out when clicked outside the callout.

This text now needs to be converted into a hyperlink. To do so, select the text in the text box and in the Insert tab again. Click Link to open the Hyperlinks dialog box.

You can specify the links to websites or a local file on your computer. Click OK to convert the selected text into a hyperlink.

You can directly hyperlink a text or a shape to a file. Double-clicking the text or shape opens the hyperlinked file. The procedure is similar to hyperlinking a website. Select the shape or text that you want to create a hyperlink for and click the Link button in the Insert tab of the Ribbon. In the Hyperlinks dialog box, click Browse… adjacent to the Address field and click Local File… to browse to the location of the file.

Make sure that the Use relative path for hyperlink box is selected to ensure that the file path is updated automatically when you change the file location. Visio also makes it possible to hyperlink pages in a multi-page document so that clicking the link will directly take you to the linked page. To hyperlink pages, select a text or shape to be linked to and click Links in the Insert tab in the Ribbon.

In the Hyperlinks dialog box, make sure to click Browse… adjacent to the Sub-address field. Select the destination page in the Page field. You can also set a default zoom level in the Zoom dropdown menu so that navigating to the linked page opens it at the desired zoom. You need not be content with the default theme.

Visio allows to customize the theme and overall look of the document. To apply a theme, go to the Design tab and choose from any of the many theme options available. Once you click any of the available themes, the theme will be applied to the document. You can further personalize it by selecting from one of the many options in the Variants section.

The Variants section allows you to customize theme colors as needed. Clicking the dropdown menu in the Variants section allows to customize the theme colors, effects, and connectors. It opens the New Theme Colors dialog box, which allows to customize each of the accents in the theme. If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, you should be right at home in Visio with respect to formatting text.

You can format titles and text within shapes. You can also use the Format Painter command to copy formatting and paste it into another shape or text box. To format the text, select the text box containing the text or highlight the text itself. Then, choose from the options available in the Font and Paragraph sections of the Home tab. You can change the font, size, color, and paragraph alignment. If you want to change the font styles in a shape, just double-click the shape to select the text within the shape and change the font styles as desired.

You can also format the shapes to give them a more professional or casual look as desired. To format shapes, select the shape in the diagram and format using the options available in the Shape Styles section. You can select predefined shape styles or you can customize the shape using the Fill dropdown menu. To adjust the color of the shape border, select a color from the Line dropdown menu.

The Effects menu allows to add special effects to your shape such as drop shadows or 3D rotations. Visio makes it easy to format the shape outlines and the connectors. You might be looking to format a shape outline to make it stand out from the rest of the shapes or to highlight something important. To format a shape outline, click the shape or hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and select multiple shapes.

This will open a Format Shape flyout. In the Line section, select the options you need to customize the shape outline. You can change the color of the shape outline, increase the width to add more weight, change the rounding, and a whole lot more.

You can also create gradients for the line to suit the diagram. Like shape outlines, connectors can also be formatted as needed. To format a connector, select the connector in the diagram and bring up the Format Shape pane by going to the Line dropdown menu and clicking Line Options In the Line section of the Format Shapes pane, select the Dash type of your choice to change the connector pattern.

The main visual aids available include rulers, grids, and guides. Rulers help in providing perspective to the elements in the diagram. They help orient the shapes to attain a consistent and clean look.

These 3 dotted lines denote the left, middle, and right parts of the diagram. When you drag the shape vertically or horizontally, these 3 dotted lines help position the shape exactly at the place you need.

Just like rulers, guides help in orienting different shapes of the diagram properly. You can create any number of guides from both the vertical and horizontal rulers. To create a guide, simply drag a line from either the vertical or horizontal rulers. Guides are represented by lines, which appear thick when selected. You can delete a guide by simply selecting the guide and pressing the Delete key on the keyboard.

Uncheck the Guides checkbox in the View tab to remove all the guides from view. Dragging a shape onto a guide will enable you to snap the shape to the guide. When a shape is snapped to a guide, it moves along with the guide.

Grids not only help to align shapes within the drawing but can also be an important measurement tool. Grids comprise of square boxes of defined area, which can be adjusted. Therefore, grids help you have an estimate of the likely area occupied by the shape, which allows you to size the shapes as needed. You can also customize the size of each grid by adjusting the spacing between the grids. To do so, click the small downward facing arrow to the bottom-right of the Show section in the View tab.

Apart from commonly used visual aids such as the ruler, guides, and grids, Visio also comes with few other visual aids to help you better organize your diagram. One of the advantages of using SmartShapes is the ability to quickly and easily connect a shape to the top four favorite shapes. AutoConnect helps to quickly select a shape from the top four and instantly establish a connection to the new shape.

Connection Points help in connecting shapes to specific points along the surface of a shape. For example, a shape can have four Connection Points along its perimeter to which connectors can attach to. Turning on Connection Points help to connect shapes precisely at defined connection points. Connection Points can be identified by green squares that appear on all sides of the shape. If you want to connect to the shape directly rather than to a connection point on the shape, uncheck the Connection Points checkbox in the View tab of the ribbon.

The Shape Data pane allows entry of additional shape metadata. This metadata is contextual and depends on the shape being selected. This is especially useful while working with complex diagrams. This allows to set precise measurements of a shape. You can also change the angle of orientation of the shape and the pin position from which the measurements are to be considered.

It is easy to work with multiple windows or multiple versions of a document in Visio. You can switch between windows easily or arrange them side by side for a comparative look. The options for window rearrangement can be found in the Window section of the View tab. New Window basically allows to create a new copy of the existing window.

This function allows you to arrange all windows side by side. This feature is useful for comparing two windows, however, if you have a high-resolution display, you might be able to accommodate more windows beside each other. The Shapes pane and other panes can be minimized to allow more screen real estate. This function allows cascading of windows to give an overall view of the open windows. The active window is in the foreground, while inactive windows are in the background with title bars visible.

Cascade view is useful to know which documents are open at a glance. The right side of the Print menu shows a preview of the output. You can change the orientation of the page, page size, and select only the pages that you need to print. Depending on your printer, you can also print in color or in greyscale. Remember that printing in black and white might not produce a good output.

Visio includes several ways to create a PDF of the drawing, which is extremely useful for sharing with others. You can save the drawing as a Visio drawing. This opens the Save As dialog box. You might want to use this if you need to have fine grain control over the PDF document such as PDF version or compatibility properties.

You can also directly email the diagram to a recipient. You can check what version you have. Note: See Install Visio if you haven't installed the Visio app yet.

Tutorial: 3 basic steps to create a Visio diagram:. Choose and open a template. Arrange and connect shapes. Add text to shapes and connectors. Templates include stencils, shapes, and grid measurements to help you get started quickly and easily when making your diagram. Templates come with stencils that are full of the shapes needed to create a particular kind of drawing. The Home Plan template, for example, opens with stencils full of shapes such as walls, furniture, appliances, cabinets, and so on.

The Organization Chart template includes distinct shapes for executives, managers, assistants, positions, consultants, vacancies, and more. Some drawings require a special scale. For example, the Site Plan template opens with an engineering scale, where 1 inch represents 10 feet. Templates come ready with appropriate settings for the drawing type. Some templates have unique features that you can find on special tabs in the ribbon.

For example, when you open the Office Layout template, a Plan tab appears. You can use the Plan tab to configure display options that are specific to office layout diagrams. In some cases when you open a Visio template, a wizard helps you get started. For example, the Space Plan template opens with a wizard that helps you set up your space and room information.

Start the Visio app or open Visio on the web. Note: Haven't installed Visio yet? If you have Visio Plan 2, you can download and install the Visio desktop app. Select the template you want, or select Basic Diagram to start from scratch. You can also browse for more templates by clicking Categories , and you can enter terms to search for templates. If you're using the desktop link, you may have to specify a specific type of that template and then select Create.

To create your diagram, you drag shapes from the stencil in the Shapes window to the canvas and connect them. There are several ways to connect shapes, but the simplest way is with AutoConnect arrows. Note: AutoConnect is available by default when your drawing is based on a template for a type that typically requires connections, like a flowchart.

If do not see the AutoConnect arrows when you hover the mouse pointer over a shape, AutoConnect is not active. Visio shapes are ready-made objects that you drag onto your drawing page — they are the building blocks of your diagram. When you drag a shape from the Shapes window onto your drawing page, the original shape remains on the stencil.

That original is called a master shape. The shape that you put on your drawing is a copy — also called an instance — of that master. You can drag as many instances of the same shape onto your drawing as you want. Instead of static pictures, you can create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data, are easy to refresh, and dramatically increase your productivity.

You can use the wide variety of diagram templates and stencils in Visio to understand, act on, and share information about organizational systems, resources, and processes throughout your enterprise. The round handle located above a selected shape is called a rotation handle. Drag it right or left to rotate the shape. The connection arrows help you easily connect shapes to one another, as you saw in the previous section.

You can use the square selection handles to change the height and width of your shape. Click and drag a selection handle on the corner of a shape to enlarge the shape without changing its proportions, or click and drag a selection handle on the side of a shape to make the shape taller or wider. You can add data to each shape by typing it in the Shape Data window — on the View tab, in the Show group, click Task Panes , and then click Shape Data.

With Visio Professional Edition, you can also import data from an external data source. Data is not displayed in the drawing by default. If you want to display the data for lots of shapes at once, you can use a feature called data graphics, also on the Data tab. The following illustration shows the data for two trees at once. Many Visio shapes have special behavior that you can find by stretching, right-clicking, or moving the yellow control handle on the shape. For example, you can stretch a People shape to show more people, or stretch the Growing flower shape to indicate growth.

Tip: A great way to find out what a shape can do is to right-click it to see if there are any special commands on its shortcut menu. The shapes automatically connect to show the hierarchy. Hold your mouse over one of the arrows and a mini toolbar appears with the top four shapes in the Quick Shapes area. Select the shape you want and it'll automatically connect to the arrow you selected.

You can also drag all your shapes onto the canvas. Then hold the mouse over a shape until the arrows appear. Then grab an arrow and drag it to a shape you want to connect to. If you're using the Visio desktop app, you can also drag a new shape directly from the Shapes window to an existing shape's arrows and connect them automatically.

Now it's time to add details to your diagram by adding text. For more details about working with text, see Add, edit, move, or rotate text on shapes and Add text to a page. Add text to a connector the same way. Click and drag it up, down, or beside the connector. To see other available themes, click More. Your diagram gets a new background, and, a new background page called VBackground This page you can see in the page tabs along the bottom of the canvas.

To edit other text in the border, first select the entire border, and then click the text you want to change and start typing. You may have to click more than once to get the text selected. Click Page-1 in the lower-right corner of the page to return to the drawing. Open Visio on the web. Note: If you have Visio Plan 2, you can also download and install the Visio desktop app. Select Create under the template you want, or select Create under Basic Diagram to start from scratch.

To create your diagram, you drag shapes from the stencil in the Shapes pane to the canvas and connect them. There are several ways to connect shapes, but the simplest way is by auto-connecting them. Note: See Add and connect shapes in Visio for the web or Change the size, rotation, and order of a shape in Visio for the web to learn more about using shapes. For more details about working with text, see Add and format text in Visio for the web.

Drag a shape from the Shapes window and drop it on the page.

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