Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Complete Courseware Written by Kelvin Macdonald Published by Velsoft Interactive Inc

Complete Training Manual

Instructor Guide Visio 2007

velsoft.com

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Complete Courseware Written by Kelvin MacDonald Published by Velsoft Interactive Inc.

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Table of Contents

Section 1: Getting Started...... 1 Lesson 1.1: Starting Out ...... 2 What is Microsoft Visio?...... 2 Visio Standard VS Visio Professional ...... 3 What’s New in Visio 2007...... 5 Opening Microsoft Visio ...... 6 Interface Overview...... 10 Closing Visio...... 12 Lesson 1.2: Interacting with Visio...... 15 Using Visio’s Menus ...... 15 Using the Standard Toolbar...... 20 Using the Formatting Toolbar ...... 23 Moving Toolbars...... 24 Hiding and Showing Toolbars ...... 27 Using the Status Bar ...... 28 Lesson 1.3: Working With Files ...... 31 Saving Files...... 31 Opening Files...... 34 Switching Between Open Files...... 37 Closing Drawings ...... 40 Lesson 1.4: Using the Getting Started Window ...... 43 Lesson 1.4: Using the Getting Started Window ...... 43 Choosing a Template Category...... 44 Choosing a Template ...... 45 Searching for a Template...... 48 Opening a Recent Template or Drawing...... 55 Using a Sample ...... 56 Templates, Stencils, and Shapes...... 58 Lesson 1.5: Getting Help in Visio ...... 60 Using the Help Window ...... 60 Using the Help Screen...... 65 Type a Question for Help ...... 73 Getting Help in a Task Pane or Dialogue Box...... 75 Section 1: Review Questions ...... 79

Section 2: Creating a Basic Drawing...... 81 Lesson 2.1: Creating a Basic Drawing ...... 82 Using the Shapes Pane...... 82 Adding Backgrounds...... 90 Adding Borders and Titles ...... 94 Adding Shapes...... 97 Lesson 2.2: Basic Editing Commands...... 99 Selecting Shapes...... 99 Using Cut, Copy, and Paste ...... 105 Undo and Redo...... 110 Resizing Shapes...... 115 Moving Shapes ...... 119

Duplicating Shapes ...... 122 Lesson 2.3: Formatting Shapes...... 123 Changing Line Style...... 123 Changing Fill Color...... 131 Adding Shadows...... 137 Modifying Corners ...... 142 Using Themes...... 143 Using the Format Painter ...... 149 Lesson 2.4: Adding Text...... 152 Using the Text Box Tool...... 152 Using the Text Block Tool...... 154 Typing and Editing Text...... 157 Inserting Symbols...... 160 Lesson 2.5: Formatting Text...... 165 Adding Basic Effects ...... 165 Changing Text Color...... 168 Changing Font Type and Size ...... 171 Aligning Text...... 174 Lesson 2.6: Working with Pages ...... 177 Adding Pages ...... 177 Switching Between Open Pages...... 180 Removing Pages...... 182 The Page Setup Dialogue...... 183 Section 2: Review Questions ...... 191

Section 3: Doing More with Your Drawing ...... 193 Lesson 3.1: Other Ways to Add Shapes...... 194 Adding Shapes from the File Menu...... 194 Accessing Shapes from the Standard Toolbar...... 198 Using the Drawing Tools Toolbar ...... 200 Adding Shape Screen Tips...... 205 Lesson 3.2: Working With Shapes ...... 207 Grouping Shapes...... 207 Layering Shapes...... 210 Rotating and Flipping Shapes...... 212 Aligning and Distributing Shapes ...... 215 Snap and Glue...... 223 Double Click Behaviors ...... 226 Lesson 3.3: More Shape Tasks ...... 228 Connecting Shapes...... 228 Configuring a Layout...... 235 Using the Re-Layout Command ...... 238 Adding Data to Shapes...... 241 Other Shape Operations...... 248 Lesson 3.4: Using Layers...... 252 Showing and Hiding Layers...... 255 Activating a Layer...... 258 Preserving Group Member Properties...... 260 Coloring (and Locking) Layers...... 262 Lesson 3.5: Adding Objects ...... 265 Inserting a Comment...... 265 Inserting an Image ...... 268 Formatting a Picture...... 276 Adding Charts ...... 279

Adding Equations...... 291 Lesson 3.6: Adding Advanced Objects ...... 294 Adding a Hyperlink ...... 294 Inserting an External Object...... 299 Inserting a CAD Drawing ...... 305 Inserting a Control...... 309 Section 3: Review Questions ...... 319

Section 4: Working With Visio Files...... 321 Lesson 4.1: Using Templates...... 322 Opening Templates ...... 322 Using a Template ...... 326 Creating a Template...... 329 Lesson 4.2: Using Stencils ...... 338 Creating a New Stencil...... 338 Adding Shapes to Stencils ...... 340 Copying Shapes from one Stencil to Another...... 340 Removing Shapes from Stencils...... 344 Saving Stencils ...... 345 Lesson 4.3: Saving Visio Files...... 349 Saving a File for the First Time ...... 349 Saving a File for the Second Time ...... 351 Changing File Extensions ...... 351 Saving a File as a Web Page...... 354 Lesson 4.4: Advanced File Tasks...... 359 Using AutoRecover ...... 359 Accessing File Properties ...... 361 Removing Hidden Information...... 365 E-Mailing a Drawing...... 367 Saving as PDF or XPS ...... 372 Section 4: Review Questions ...... 375

Section 5: Viewing and Printing your Drawings...... 377 Lesson 5.1: Managing your Drawings ...... 378 Using Minimize, Maximize, and Restore...... 378 Using Zoom...... 383 Using Guides...... 386 Using the Dynamic Grid ...... 389 Viewing or Hiding Rulers, Grids, Guides, and Connection Points...... 392 Lesson 5.2: Managing Windows...... 395 Creating a New Window ...... 395 Cascading Windows...... 397 Tiling Windows ...... 398 Using the ShapeSheet...... 400 Lesson 5.3: More Visio Windows ...... 408 Using the Pan and Zoom Window...... 408 Using the Shape Data Window ...... 413 Using the Size and Position Window...... 415 Using the Drawing Explorer Window...... 416 The External Data Window and External Data Features ...... 418 Lesson 5.4: Using Print Preview...... 434 Opening Print Preview...... 434 Using the Print Preview Toolbar ...... 436 Zooming In and Out ...... 437

Changing View Options ...... 440 Navigating Print Preview...... 445 Setting Print Options...... 446 Lesson 5.5: Printing a Drawing...... 454 Print Commands ...... 454 Using the Print Dialogue ...... 457 Setting Printer Options ...... 459 Copies and Page Ranges...... 463 Section 5: Review Questions ...... 466

Index...... 468

In this section you will learn how to: Recognize the differences between Visio Standard and Visio Professional Recognize the parts of the interface Open and close Visio Use the menus Recognize commands on the Standard and Formatting toolbars Show, hide, and move toolbars Use the Status bar Open files in Visio Switch between open files Save, name, and close files Use the Getting Started window Choose a template Use stencils and shapes Use the Help window and Help screen Type a question in the Help box Get help in a task pane or dialogue box

Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional 2

Lesson 1.1: Starting Out

Welcome to Visio 2007. The following lesson is intended to give you a gentle introduction to the Microsoft Visio 2007 program. To start, you will learn what Microsoft Visio is and what versions of Visio 2007 are available. In addition, you will learn what’s new in Visio 2007, how to open and close it; and become familiar with the Visio User Interface.

What is Microsoft Visio?

If you have complicated information that you would like to communicate fully and clearly, diagrams and charts can be a big help. This is the basic reasoning behind Microsoft’s Visio 2007 application.

Put simply, Microsoft Visio 2007 is a drawing program; a drawing program with advanced functions and features that allow you to create professional looking diagrams and charts. Visio also provides templates for specific chart or diagram types. These templates can help you create a diagram quickly and easily.

With Visio, you can create eye catching charts and diagrams that illustrate your information graphically. This makes your information easier to visualize, to understand, and to communicate to others.

In this regard, Visio provides the flexibility to create a wide variety of charts and diagrams that can display pretty much anything from business processes to precise technical specifications. If you want to get your meaning across clearly with a custom chart or diagram, Visio is a great tool to use.

(The image on the following page shows the Visio Professional 2007 “Getting Started” screen).

Visio Standard VS Visio Professional

There are two versions of Visio 2007 available; Visio Standard and Visio Professional. For the most part, the user interface and the core functions are the same in both versions, which means that this manual can be used regardless of which version you have installed. The following paragraphs summarize some of the differences between the two versions.

The main differences between the standard and professional versions of Visio can be seen in the number of diagram categories available, and in the number of preset templates that are provided.

Visio Standard can be viewed as having primarily a business emphasis, with support for business process diagrams, flow charts, brainstorming diagrams, organizational charts, and much more.

Visio Standard allows you to save your drawing/diagram as a Web page, and as a PDF or XPS file (a Microsoft or third party add‐in is required to save Visio diagrams as PDF or XPS files).

Visio Standard also provides integration with Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Project, which allows you to import Gantt chart and Time Line information from Project, or Calendar information from Outlook, into your Visio files.

Visio Professional on the other hand, has all of the business features of Visio Standard, and In addition, provides support for creating engineering diagrams, structural diagrams, database modeling diagrams, software engineering diagrams and more.

You could say that Visio Standard is designed for general business use, while Visio Professional is geared more towards engineering and information technology professionals. (Of course, Visio Professional can be used for general business diagrams as well).

The following is a list of the features that come with Visio Professional, but not with Visio Standard. If you don’t require any of these additional features, Visio Standard should be more than adequate for your needs.

Visio Professional 2007 supports these additional diagram types and features:

A variety of engineering diagram types (electrical, mechanical, process)

Logical Network Diagrams

Building and Floor Plans

Pivot Diagrams

Software Diagramming and Reverse Engineering

Website Mapping

Database Modeling Diagrams

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) Diagrams

Network Rack Diagrams

Directory Service Diagrams

Data Link Functionality (Connect to external data sources)

Data‐Driven solution support

Data Graphics functionality

Value Stream Maps

What’s New in Visio 2007

Visio 2007 provides a number of new features that where unavailable in previous versions. The following table provides a list of some of these features

Getting Started Window This window provides a list of template categories and large preview templates for each category in the list. This allows you to find the template you want to use quickly and easily.

There are also recently used templates, and sample diagrams available in the Getting Started Window

Themes In Visio 2007 you can use theme colors and theme effects to make your diagrams and charts visually exciting and consistent.

AutoConnect The new AutoConnect feature lets you connect, distribute, and align shapes and objects in your diagram automatically.

Connect to External Data sources This feature allows you to connect to Microsoft Access, (Requires Visio Professional) Excel, SQL server (and other) data sources.

You can also refresh the data from these connections.

Pivot Diagrams This new feature allows you to create multiple views of (Requires Visio Professional) your data that you can explore and analyze.

Support for saving Visio diagrams The PDF (portable document format) allows you to save as PDF documents your Visio diagrams in a widely accessible file type that (An add‐in is required for this retains the exact format of the diagram. Moreover, PDF functionality). files are often used in situations that involve large scale printing.

Support for saving Visio diagrams The XPS format (XML Paper Specification) also allows you as XPS files to save Visio diagrams as a file type that retains the (An add‐in is required for this original diagram formatting. functionality).

Integration with Microsoft Office This feature replaces the Detect and Repair feature and diagnostics. the Office Application recovery feature used in earlier versions of Microsoft Office Programs.

2007 Microsoft Office Spelling Visio 2007 can take advantage of the new Office 2007 checker spell checking system that has been integrated across the 2007Office system programs.

Opening Microsoft Visio

The easiest way to open Microsoft Visio 2007 is to simply double click the Visio 2007 icon on your desktop.

If you cannot find this icon, you can try the Windows button in the lower left of your desktop.

(The Windows button is a component of the Windows Vista desk top. If you are using an earlier version of Microsoft windows like XP, you would use the Start button to display the Start menu).

When you click this button, a start up menu will appear. If you see a Visio 2007 option in this menu (shown below) you can click the option to start Visio.

If you do not see the Visio option on the menu, click the All Programs (or just “Programs”) option, on the menu and then look for the Microsoft Office option. Under the Microsoft Office option you should find Visio 2007 in the list of Microsoft Office programs. As before, if you click on the Visio 2007 option (shown below) the program will open.

In Windows Vista, you can also open Visio by typing the word Visio in the search box at the bottom of the Start menu, and then pressing the Enter key.

If you are using an earlier version of windows, you could click the Run option on the Windows start menu, and then enter the word Visio into the run dialogue.

When you click Ok, or hit your Enter key, the Visio program should open up on your screen. If you cannot open Visio by using the methods given above, it may not be installed properly on your system.

Interface Overview

A user interface consists of the buttons, menus, options, and windows that allow you to view your data and access the given application’s functions. The following image shows the typical Visio 2007 screen components.

1. Title Bar Displays the name of the application, as well as the name of the current drawing.

At the right of the title bar, you can see the window controls that let you minimize, maximize, restore, or close the Visio screen.

2. Menu Bar This bar contains menu headings. When you click on a heading, a menu of related options will appear.

3. and 4. Standard Toolbar and The tool bars let you access Visio 2007 functions and Formatting toolbar commands by providing clickable buttons

5. Shapes Pane This pane allows you to access (drag and drop) shapes to include them in your diagram.

The shape options that appear in the Shapes pane will depend on which category of shapes that you select.

6. Task Pane A task pane provides access to different options, hyperlinks, and other controls for managing and modifying your diagrams.

There are multiple task panes in Visio and each one will provide different options.

7. Diagram /Chart area This is where you will build your diagram (your working area).

At the bottom of this working area, you will notice one or more page tabs. If your diagram spans multiple pages, you can click on a page tab to view the corresponding page.

8. Status Bar The small bar at the bottom gives you a status report (displays information) related to the current Visio diagram that you are working on.

The Status bar can tell you the dimensions of a shape or object, the coordinates of the object in the working area, and more.

Closing Visio

It is quite easy to close the Visio program. To shut down Visio 2007, just click the white close (x) button in the upper right of the Visio screen (on the title bar).

Alternatively, you can click the “File” menu heading in the menu bar, and then click the Exit option on the menu that appears.

If you are working on a diagram, and you close Visio without saving your work, you will see a small dialogue box like the following.

This dialogue is giving you the opportunity to save you work before Visio closes.

If you click the Yes button, you can save your work. If you click the No button, Visio will close and your most recent work will not be saved. If you click the Cancel button, the dialogue will

Lesson 1.2: Interacting with Visio

Now that you know how to open and close Visio 2007, it is time to take a closer look at some of Visio’s interface components.

In this lesson, you will learn how to use Visio’s menus, how to use the Standard toolbar, how to use the Formatting toolbar, and finally, how to hide or display toolbars.

Using Visio’s Menus

When you open the Visio 2007 program, you will see a menu bar across the top of the Visio screen.

This menu bar contains a series of menu headings. When you click one of the headings, a menu of options related to that heading will be displayed.

The image above shows the Visio 2007 “File” menu.

If you examine the options in a menu closely, you will see that some menu items are followed by a right pointing arrow (at the right edge of the menu) while other menu items are followed by three dots…

If a menu option has a right pointing arrow (like the New option in the menu shown above) a sub menu of will appear if you follow that option by clicking it or pausing with your mouse pointer on it.

In the following image, you can see the File menu, and the sub menu for the New option.

As you can see, the sub menu itself contains options with right pointing arrows. These options will each have their own sub menu.

If you click a menu option that has three dots following it, you will typically see a dialogue or task pane appear. In the Sample image on the following page, you can see that the Open option on the file menu the File menu has three dots following it.

If you click the Open option, an Open dialogue will appear as shown below.

If you look carefully at the Visio Menu bar, you will see that there are letters in the Menu headings that are underlined. These underlined letters correspond to keyboard commands.

On your keyboard; if you press and hold your Alt key, and then press the underlined letter in a menu heading, the corresponding menu will appear on your screen.

You should also notice that some menu options have keyboard shortcuts associated with them. For example, the Open option on the file menu displays a Ctrl + O shortcut.

If you Use the Ctrl + O shortcut, the Open dialogue will appear as before, just as if you used the menu options.

As a matter of fact, if you follow any of the keyboard shortcuts shown in the Visio menus, the result will be the same as if you used the corresponding menu options directly.

Using the Standard Toolbar

The Standard toolbar lies just below the menu bar on the Visio screen:

The buttons on the standard toolbar provide access to many of Visio’s core functions and tools.

If you let your mouse pointer hover over a button for a moment, you will see a tool tip appear. This tool tip will reveal the buttons name and sin some cases the key‐board shortcut for the feature that corresponds to the button.

The following image shows the save button on the standard toolbar, and its tool tip.

The following table provides a brief overview of the Standard toolbar buttons, and what they are for.

New button Click the New button to create a new

drawing. You can use the arrow next to the button to access various diagram categories.

Open button Use the Open button to open files (display an

Open dialogue).

Save button Use the save button to save your work.

E‐mail button Use the E‐mail button to send your diagram

as an Outlook e‐mail.

Print button Use the Print button to print a copy of your

diagram

Print Preview button Use the Print Preview button to see a preview

of what your printed diagram will look like

Spelling button Use the Spelling button to check for spelling

errors in you text

Cut, Copy, Paste, and These edit buttons allow you to edit and

Delete manipulate selected text or objects

Undo and Redo The Undo button allows you to “undo” a

recent mistake or unwanted action

The Redo button allows you to “redo” an action that was recently undone.

Shapes button The Shapes button will display a menu of

shape categories

Pointer tool The Pointer tool provides options that help

you make selections in your diagram

Connector tool This tool helps you to connect elements in

your diagram

Text tool The text tool helps you add text to your

diagram

Drawing tools The Drawing button will display the Drawing

toolbar

AutoConnect button AutoConnect will help you connect objects in

your drawing automatically

Zoom control The Zoom control allows you to select a

magnification level for your diagram.

The higher the zoom value, the larger your diagram will appear

Help button The help button will display the Visio help

window. You can use this window to find information and instructions for a variety of Visio topics.

Using the Formatting Toolbar

When you open the Visio 2007 program, you will notice a second toolbar directly beneath the Standard toolbar.

This is the Formatting toolbar, which contains buttons and controls for formatting the text and objects in your Visio diagrams.

If you let your mouse pointer hover over a button on the formatting toolbar, you will see a tool tip appear that displays the button’s name (just as with the Standard toolbar).

The following table provides a brief overview of the buttons on the Formatting toolbar, and what they are for.

Font drop list Use this drop list to select a font type

for selected text in your diagram

Font size drop list Use this drop list to select a font size

for your text

Font effects buttons Use these buttons to apply a bold,

italic, or underline effect to selected text

Alignment buttons Use these buttons to right align text,

center align text, or left align text

Bullets button Use this button to create bullets in

your text

Indent buttons Use the indent buttons to increase or

decrease the indent of selected text

Text color button Use this button to select a text color.

If you click the small arrow, you will be able to pick a color from a drop down menu

Line color button Use this button to select a color for

lines drawn in your diagram. If you click the small arrow, you will be able to pick a color from a drop down menu

Fill color Use this button to select a fill color

for objects in your diagram. If you click the small arrow, you will be able to pick a color from a drop down menu

Theme button Use this button to display the Theme

colors task pane

Line weight button Use this button to increase the

thickness of lines in your drawing. If you click the small arrow, you will be able to pick a line weight from a drop down menu

Line Pattern button Use this button to change the pattern

that your lines use. If you click the small arrow, you will be able to pick a pattern from a drop down menu

Line Ends button Use this button to specify how lines in

your diagram end. If you click the small arrow, you will be able choose a line end from a drop down menu.

Moving Toolbars

Visio allows users to move, relocate, hide, and display an assortment of toolbars. By providing this kind of user customization, Visio allows you to layout your screen in a way that best suits how you like to work.

To move a toolbar in Visio 2007, you just have to place your mouse pointer on the vertical line of dots at the left side of the toolbar, click and hold your left mouse button, and then drag the tool bar with your mouse.

(In the image above, you can see the lines of dots at the left side of the menu bar, the standard toolbar, and the formatting toolbar.)

When you move a toolbar, and it is no longer docked at the top or sides of the screen, its appearance will change.

In the image above, you can see how the Standard toolbar now has a thick blue bar along its top edge. You can also move a toolbar by dragging it by this thick blue bar.

If you drag a toolbar to the bottom, top or sides of the Visio screen, you can dock the toolbar at the edge that you drag it to.

In the following image, you can see that the formatting toolbar has been dragged to the left side of the Visio screen and docked there, while the standard toolbar has been dragged and docked at the bottom.

To move a docked toolbar, just drag it with your mouse by using the line of vertical dots, at the left (or top) end of the toolbar.

Remember, in Visio you can also move and dock the menu bar if you wish.

Hiding and Showing Toolbars

If you right click on the menu bar or a toolbar, a menu will appear on your screen.

This menu lists all of the toolbars that are available in Visio. If you click an option in the menu that does not already have a checkmark by it, a checkmark will appear next to that option. If you click an option that does have a checkmark by it, the checkmark will disappear for that option.

If there is a checkmark by an option in this menu, the corresponding toolbar will be available on the Visio screen. If there is no checkmark by a particular option, that toolbar will remain hidden.

To display a toolbar, just click the corresponding option in the toolbar menu to place a check next to it. To hide a toolbar, just remove the check from the option corresponding to the toolbar that you want to hide.

If a toolbar is displayed on your screen, and it is not docked to the top, bottom, or sides, you can close (hide it) by clicking the x in the upper right corner.

Using the Status Bar

At the bottom of the Visio 2007 screen, you will see the Status bar.

At the far right of the status bar, you will see numbers indicating page of the current drawing is displayed and the total amount of pages in the drawing.

For example, in the status bar shown below, the page being displayed in the working area is page 1, of a two page document.

If you select an object, (like a shape) by clicking on it in the Visio working area, the status bar will display the width, height, and angle of the selected object (as shown in the image below).

Furthermore, if you drag an object with your mouse to move it, the status bar will tell you the position of the left side, right side, and bottom of the object with respect to the rulers on the side and top of the working area as shown below:

Lesson 1.3: Working With Files

In this next lesson, you will cover the basics of file management in Visio, by learning how to save, open Visio files. In addition, you will also learn how to switch between open files, and how to close Visio drawings.

Saving Files

The default file format for Visio drawings is VSD (Visio Drawing) format. If you are saving a file that you are working on in Visio, you should save it as a VSD file. This way, you can easily reopen the file in Visio to continue working on it or modifying it.

To save a Visio file, click the File menu in the main menu bar, and then click the Save As option.

When you perform this action, a save as dialogue will appear on your screen.

In the Save As dialogue, use the navigation controls on the left to browse to a suitable location on your computer.

Once you find a place where you would like to save your file, enter a name for the file in the File Name field, and then click the Save button. The file type specified in the “Save As Type” field of the dialogue should be “drawing”. This action will save your file as a VSD file.

If you are planning to continue work on your diagram, save it as a Visio drawing (VSD file) so you can easily open it up in Visio.

If you are finished creating your chart or diagram, you can choose to save it as another file format other than Visio drawing (VSD), by selecting an option from the “Save As Type” drop list.

You can see the list of available file formats by clicking the small arrow at the Right of the “Save as Type” field.

Just click on the format of your choice from the list to select it. When you click the save button, the Visio file will be saved as the format you selected.

As you can see from the image above, you can use Visio to save a drawing as an image file (like gif, png, or jpeg), as a stencil or template (we’ll learn more about stencils and templates later), as an AutoCad Drawing, or as one of several other file types.

In general, if you haven’t yet completed your chart or diagram, you should save it as a Visio drawing (VSD file).

The instructions just provided explain how to save a Visio file for the first time. If you are e working on a Visio file that you have already saved, you can save your changes to the file by simply clicking the Save button on the standard toolbar.

When you click this button, the file (including any changes you made since you opened it) will be resaved with the same file name and location. If you have not already saved the file, clicking the save button on the toolbar will display a save as dialogue, just ads if you chose the Save as option.

Opening Files

When you are opening existing files in Visio, you will typically be opening a VSD file (Visio drawing), a VST file (Visio template), a VSS file (Visio stencil), or perhaps XML variants of these file types (VDX, VTX, and VSX respectively).

Top open an existing file in Visio, click the File menu on the main menu bar, and then click the Open option.

When you perform this action, an open dialogue will appear on your screen. In the Open dialogue, use the navigation controls on the left to browse to the location folder for the file you want to open. When you find the file, click it to select it, and then click the Open button.

At his point, the selected file will open up in Visio.

You can also display the Open dialogue by clicking the Open button on the Standard toolbar.

In addition, you can use the CTRL + O keyboard shortcut to display the Open dialogue.

Finally, if you open Visio and display the file menu, you will see a list of recently used files at the bottom (as shown below).

The files listed here will be ones that you have recently worked on or saved. Just click on an item in the recently used list to open it in Visio. By default, the recently used file list can hold up to nine items.

Switching Between Open Files

Once you really start using Visio, there may be times when you are working with multiple Visio files at the same time. If you want to see a list of the files that you currently have open in Visio, click the Window menu on the main menu bar.

At the bottom of the Window menu, you will see a list of the currently open Visio files.

In the image shown above, there are three files open. The file with the check next to it is the file that is currently being viewed in the working area of the Visio screen. To switch to another file, just click the corresponding entry in the Window menu to place a check by it, and display it in the main working area.

When you have a file open in Visio, you will see window controls at the far right of the menu bar.

If you click the minimize button (‐) in this group of controls, the working area window will collapse, revealing the other open Visio files beneath (as shown below).

The file that has been minimized is shown in the red rectangle. If you click on the title bar of any of the underlying files, it will come to the foreground.

To expand a file so that it occupies the entire working area, click the maximize button at the right of the given file’s title bar.

Closing Drawings

To close a Visio drawing that fully occupies the working area, click on the (X) button at the right of the menu bar.

When you click this button, a small message box will appear on your screen asking you if you want to save the changes to the drawing (the drawing that you are attempting to close).

If you click the Yes button in the small message box, you will be able to save and close the drawing. If you click the No button, the drawing will close and your work will not be saved. If you click the Cancel button, the drawing will not be closed and you can continue to work on it.

If a Visio drawing window has been reduced in size, the (X) button to close the drawing will appear the drawing window title bar; not at the right of the menu bar as before.

Lesson 1.4: Using the Getting Started Window

One of the new features in Visio 2007 is the Getting Started Window. This is the opening screen that you see by default when you first start Visio 2007. In this lesson, you will learn how to perform different actions with Visio templates by using the Getting Started Window.

Choosing a Template Category

When the Getting Started window first appears, you will see three main sections. On the left you will see a Template Categories section that provides a list of the various types of templates that are available (as shown in the following image).

In the center area of the Getting Started window, you will see a set of recently used templates (if you are using Visio 2007 for the first time, this section could be empty), and finally, on the right of the Getting Started window you will see a recent documents list.

The list on the left, (in the Template Categories section), contains all of the different types of drawings that you can create in Visio.

Note: The template categories list may look different from the one shown in the image above, depending on what version of Visio 2007 you are using.

To select a template type, just click on the Template category (from the list on the left) that you feel is most appropriate for the chart or diagram that you want to create. When you click on a

template category in the list, the center part of the Getting Started window will display a list of templates that are available in that category.

The templates shown in the center area will be displayed as preview/thumbnails, which gives you a general idea of the types of drawings you can create in that template category.

In the following image, you can see how the Template thumbnails give you a general idea of the different types of drawings that you can create from the Business category of templates.

If you want to create a different type of drawing, just click on another category in the Template Categories list. Examples of the types of drawings that you can create from the templates will appear as previews in the center pane of the Getting Started Window.

Choosing a Template

Once you have decided on a general Drawing type, (i.e. business, flowchart, or general) from the Template categories list; you can look in the center pane of the Getting Started window to get an idea of what the drawings from your chosen category can look like.

In the next image, the flowchart category has been selected, which reveals Flowchart template previews in the center pane. You can use the scroll bar at the right of the center pane to view all of the template previews.

If you see a template thumbnail that resembles the type of drawing that you want to create, click on it to select it. The template thumbnail that is selected in the center pane will be shown as a preview in the right side of the Getting Started window.

Underneath the preview, a brief description will appear, detailing the types of diagrams and charts that the selected template is intended for.

The following image shows a closer view of the “Basic Flowchart” preview and description.

If you would like to create a diagram or chart based on this template, just click the Create button to get started.

When you click the Create button, an empty working area will open up, and the shapes available in the selected template will appear in a shapes pane on the left.

Searching for a Template

As mentioned above, you can preview the templates that are available in Microsoft Visio 2007 by using the template categories list in the Getting Started window.

When you select a template from a given category, it will be previewed in the getting started window, and a brief description will be provided. By using these features, you can quickly and easily select the template that seems most appropriate for the type of drawing that you want to create.

The templates that come with Visio 2007 will allow you to create a wide variety of different drawings (charts and diagrams). However, the possibility exists that you may have to create a chart or diagram type that isn’t covered by the default Visio templates. If you find that this is the case, you can either create the shapes for your drawing from scratch, or, you can search for additional template resources on line.

When you start Visio 2007 and the Getting Started window appears, make sure the Getting Started heading is selected in the Template Categories pane, and then look in the center area (pane) under the Recent Templates list. You should be able to locate a Hyperlink that reads “Templates” as shown in the following image.

If you click this link, your Internet Explorer Web browser should appear, and a Web page from Microsoft Office Online should open up automatically. (Note: an internet connection will be required).

When the Web page opens, look for the search box in the upper left of the page, and enter Visio Templates as a search term.

At this point, just click the search button to generate a list of results. The search results can contain Visio templates, information and presentations on templates, and more.

In the Image that follows, you can see two of the templates available from the Microsoft Office Online Web page.

To get more information on a template that you are curious about, click the hyperlink that corresponds to it.

When you do this, a Web page should appear in your browser that provides a large preview of the types of diagrams that you can make from the template. In addition, there should also be a brief description about the template (see the image on the following page).

If you think that a given template meets your requirements, click the download link or button to download the template to your computer. (Remember; only download templates from Websites that you trust).

Once the template has been saved to your computer, you can open it in Visio by using the Open dialogue box. (File menu followed by the Open option).

You can also enter the words “Visio Templates” into the Type a Question for Help box in the upper right of the Visio screen.

When you hit the Enter key, a Visio help window will be returned with hyperlinks to Visio templates that are available in Microsoft Office Online:

Opening a Recent Template or Drawing

If you have already used Visio 2007 to work on and save a drawing, it should appear in the Recent Documents pane of the Getting Started Window.

To open your recent document in Visio, just click on its thumbnail in the Recent Documents pane. When you open the getting Started window, a list of recently used templates will appear in the center pane /area under the Recent Templates heading. To use one of these recent templates, just click its thumbnail in the Getting Started window.

Using a Sample

When the Getting Started Window appears, you will see a Samples heading in the Template categories pane.

If you click on the Samples category, you will see a selection of sample drawings appear in the center area of the Getting Started window:

At this point, you can click on a sample to select it, and then click the Open Diagram button on the right to open the selected sample drawing in Visio.

Once the sample Drawing is open in Visio, you can use the Visio editing and formatting tools to customize the drawing to your taste.

(Note: the Getting Started window and Sample Drawings shown in the preceding images are from Visio 2007 Professional).

Templates, Stencils, and Shapes

Since we are beginning to talk about creating drawings and using templates, now is probably a good time to introduce the key concepts of what a template is, what a Stencil is, and what a Shape is.

A Visio Shape is a basic geometrical object or building block of a Visio diagram. Most people that use Visio take advantage of the shapes that come with the program. But; if you need a special custom shape, you can create your own from scratch.

Basically, a Stencil is a collection of Shape objects, backgrounds, or other drawing patterns. Related shapes are grouped in a Stencil based on the types of charts and diagrams that the shapes will be used to create.

For example, in the following shapes pane you can see a list of Stencils in the blue box, and a list of shapes associated with the selected (highlighted) stencil in the red box.

A Visio template is a collection of stencils that are related to a given category, like business, flowcharts, engineering, and so on.

Most people who use Visio find the templates, stencils, and shapes that come packaged with the installation to be more than adequate for their diagramming or charting needs. However, as mentioned above, if additional shapes are required, they can be created from scratch.

Lesson 1.5: Getting Help in Visio

No matter what software application you are using, it is always a good idea to know how to get help if you run into problems. In this lesson, we will learn about the Visio 2007 Help features, including the Help menu, the help window, and the Type a question field. In addition, you’ll also learn how to get help from within a Visio 2007 task pane.

Using the Help Window

One of the first help features that you can turn to is the Visio help menu. This menu is located at the far right of the menu bar, and contains options for various online and off line resources.

If you click the first option in the Help menu (Microsoft Office Visio Help), you will open up the Visio 2007 help window (as shown below).

You will learn more about the help window later in the lesson. For now, we will continue with the other help menu options.

If you click the next option on the menu, (the Developer Reference option) a help window will open up with links to different categories of information for those users who want to develop programs or automation that involves Visio.

The next option in the Help Menu (Sample diagrams) will display the Sample diagram previews in the Getting Started window (as discussed near the end of lesson 1.4).

If you click the Microsoft Office Online option in the menu, the Microsoft Office Online Web page will be loaded and displayed in your Web browser.

This Website contains a number of links to various sources of information, downloads, and updates for the Microsoft office line of applications. Of course, an internet connection is required to take advantage of this option.

The “Contact Us” menu option will display a Web page with contact links and information that provide support for Microsoft office products. As with the preceding Help menu option, an internet connection is required.

In the next section of the Help menu, you will see an option to check for updates, and an option for Office diagnostics.

If you click “Check for Updates”, a Web page will open that will allow you to update the Microsoft products on your computer.

The specific appearance of the Web page that appears may depend on the particular version of Windows and/or Office that you are using.

The Office Diagnostics option will invoke an Office diagnostics dialogue as shown below.

If the Visio 2007 application (or other Microsoft Office applications) are behaving erratically (i.e. crashing, or slow to respond) you can run the Office diagnostics tool to help identify and repair performance issues. (An internet connection may be required for this diagnostics program to connect to Microsoft Servers).

Note: The Office Diagnostics dialogue may look somewhat different from the image above, depending on what version of Windows you are using. The image shown above is from Windows Vista.

The final few options on the Help menu allow you to activate your Visio 2007 application (if you haven’t already), view your privacy options and the Microsoft privacy statement, and finally, see information about Visio and your computer system.

Using the Help Screen

As mentioned in the preceding discussion, the first option on the Help menu will display the Visio Help Window. The contents that appear in your help window will depend on whether or not you have an internet connection.

If you do have an active internet connection, your help window should look something like the following:

When you first open your help window, it may not be fully expanded. To maximize the help screen just click the maximize button in the upper right.

From this help window, you can access both online and offline help. Online help requires an internet connection, while offline help only requires the help files that are stored on your computer when you install Visio 2007.

When you display the Online Help Screen by clicking the first option in the Help menu, (or by pressing the F1 key with an active internet connection) you will see a window displaying a number of hyperlinks (like the one shown above).

If you click on any of these hyperlinks, you will be presented with additional hyperlinks that are more specific to the subject you are finding help on.

As an example; if you click on the link called “Formatting diagrams”….

… Another selection of hyperlinks more specific to this subject will be displayed.

If you continue to follow the links, you will see even more specific subject headings until you reach the information and instructions that are closest to what you are looking for.

You can click the back and forward buttons to move between pages that you have visited in the help screen. (These buttons behave very much like the back and forward buttons in a Web browser).

You will also notice a refresh button near the top of the Help screen, and a Home button. Clicking on the Home button will take you to the original online help screen that you started with.

There is also a table of contents button ( ) if you prefer to work through a table of contents like the one shown below.

You can print the information in the help screen by clicking the printer icon ( ), and you can make sure that the help screen stays visible while you are working with Visio, by clicking the keep on top button (looks like a pushpin icon ).

You can refine your search for help topics by specifying a particular section of help topics to be searched in the Search drop menu, (“developer reference” in the image shown below), and then entering a particular term to search for (in this case “status bar”) in the field provided.

If you want to close the help screen, simply click the close button (x), in the upper right corner of the help screen.

It may sometimes be the case that you need help with Visio, but an internet connection is not available. In this situation, there is still an offline help option that you can take advantage of.

When you display the help window without an active internet connection, it may look something like the following image:

If you click on the Show me offline help from my computer link (indicated in this image by a red rectangle) you will see something like the following.

Each one of the subject links on this page will lead to information that is stored locally on your computer. To follow the links you just have to click on them. Each link will take you to more specific subject links that you can follow until you find the information that is closest to what you are looking for.

The search option and the table of contents are still available to you just as they were in online help; but in offline help there will be significantly less information or instructions at your disposal. For this reason, it is a good idea to use online help if you are able to (i.e. if you have an internet connection).

Type a Question for Help

In the upper right of your Visio 2007 screen, you will see a field containing the words “Type a question for Help”

If you type a term, phrase, or question in this field and press the Enter key, a help screen will appear with a list of topics that are related to the question, term, or phrase that you typed.

As an example, we’ll type “template” into the field and press the Enter key.

Here are the results of this action.

(The results in this help screen were obtained with an active connection to the internet).

You can enter multiple terms into the Type a question field to generate more results. For example, entering TEMPLATE SHAPE into the field will generate results that relate to both TEMPLATES and to SHAPES.

If you want very specific results, you can put the term in quotation marks when you enter it in the field. Entering the term “organization chart” will generate help topics that contain an exact match to the phrase: organization chart.

Getting Help in a Task Pane or Dialogue Box

Once you start designing or modifying charts and diagrams in Visio 2007, you will no doubt use one or more of the task panes task panes or dialogue boxes at some point.

Some of the Visio 2007 task panes contain a “Help” link at the bottom of the pane.

If you click one of these task pane help links, a help window will open up on your screen containing clickable headings for help topics related to the task pane you are in.

If you are connected to the internet, help topics from Microsoft Office online can be included in the window.

For example, here is the help window that opens up after clicking the More about reviewing link in the Reviewing task pane.

Once the help window appears on your screen, just click the help links in the window or search (as described previously) to get the instructions or information that you need.

Remember, when you click a help link in a task pane, the help topics that appear will be related to the tasks that you perform with that particular task pane.

In addition to the task pane help links; there are often help buttons available in the different Visio dialogue boxes. For example, the Find dialogue shown below contains a help button in the lower left corner.

Typically a help button in a dialogue box will look like this:

Or this:

When you click one of these help buttons from within a dialogue box, a help window will appear with information and links related to the particular purpose of the dialogue.

Section 1: Review Questions

1. What is Microsoft Visio? A. A spreadsheet program B. A word processor C. A drawing program D. A photo editing program

2. What are the two versions of Visio 2007? A. Standard and Professional B. Business and Professional C. Business and Scientific D. Regular and Deluxe

3. The AutoConnect feature is… A. New in Visio 2007 B. A standard feature in all editions of Visio C. There is no AutoConnect feature D. None of the above.

4. The Save button can be found on the… A. Standard toolbar B. Formatting toolbar C. Drawing toolbar D. All of the above

5. To display a list of the available toolbars you can… A. Click the Data menu followed by the Toolbars option B. Click the File menu followed by the toolbars option C. Right click on any toolbar D. Answer

6. The Status bar is located… A. Just under the title bar B. Beside the menu bar C. Above the formatting toolbar D. At the bottom of the Visio screen

7. When Visio 2007 opens, you will automatically see the… A. Shapes pane B. Theme pane C. Getting Started window D. Open dialogue

8. Which one of the following is correct? A. Templates contain Stencils B. Stencils contain templates C. Shapes contain Templates D. All of the above.

9. Which one of the following statements is true? A. If you do not have an internet connection, you cannot use the Help features B. You can get both online and offline help without an internet connection C. There are no help features in Visio D. With an internet connection, you can access offline and online help

10. Which one of the following statements is false? A. Visio Standard is great for business diagrams B. Visio Professional is great for business diagrams C. You can use both versions of Visio to create charts D. Visio Standard is preferable for advanced engineering and information technology diagrams.

Section 2: Creating a Basic Drawing

In this section you will learn how to: Create a basic shape with the Shape pane Add backgrounds, borders, and titles Add custom shapes to the drawing Select shapes in your drawing Use cut, copy, and paste Use undo and redo Resize, move, and duplicate shapes Change line styles and fill colors Add shadows to shapes Modify shape corners Use themes Use the Format Painter Use the Text Box and Text Block tools Insert symbols Add basic text effects Change text color, size, and type Align text on the page Add new pages to the document Switch between open pages Remove pages Use the Page Setup dialogue

Lesson 2.1: Creating a Basic Drawing

In this lesson, you’ll start looking at the basics of creating charts and diagrams in Visio. More specifically, you will learn about the Shapes pane, how to add Backgrounds, how to add borders and Titles, and how to add basic shapes.

Using the Shapes Pane

The Shapes Pane is a key feature for designing charts and diagrams in Visio. Once you choose a template form the Getting Started window, the shapes pane will appear on the left of your Visio 2007 screen.

At the top of the Shapes pane, you will find a search box. Beneath this search box, you will see a list of stencils that belong to the given template.

Here is an example of what a stencil icon looks like.

If you click on a stencil from the stencil list in the Shapes pane, you will see the shapes that belong to the selected stencil displayed in the pane.

The following image shows the shapes that are displayed when you select the Organizational Chart Stencil.

If you click another stencil to select it, the contents of that stencil will appear in the lower part Shapes pane.

For example, the following image shows the Shapes pane after selecting the Borders and Titles stencil.

You should Notice how the other stencils (Backgrounds and Organization Chart Shapes) are still visible, at the bottom of the Shapes pane.

As mentioned before, there is a “Search for Shapes” field at the top of the shapes pane. You can type a search term in this field and then click the green button with the white arrow (or hit your Enter key) to start a search. Visio will find and display any shapes that match the term that you specified.

In the following image, a shape search was performed using the term “Square”.

You can use the shapes returned from a search just as you would any other shape in the Shapes pane. If you click on a stencil, to display that stencil’s shapes, the search results will still be available in the Shapes pane under a special icon in the stencil list.

This special icon will be labeled with the term that you used for your search. (In the following image, the Organization Chart shapes stencil has been selected. Notice how the Search results are still available).

You can close the Shapes pane by clicking the close (x) button in the upper right of the pane.

If you close the Shapes pane in this way, you can get it back by clicking the View menu, followed by the Shapes Window option.

If you right click on a stencil in the shapes pane, you will be presented with options for saving the stencil, closing it, or changing how the shapes belonging to a stencil are displayed.

To save the given stencil, click the save as button on the popup menu. To close the stencil, click the Close option (closing a stencil will remove it from the shapes pane).

To change how your stencil’s shapes are displayed, click the View option in the popup menu and then select the option you want from the sub menu that appears.

In the following example image, we are right clicking on a stencil, selecting the view option from the popup menu, and then selecting the Icons and Details option.

Please note how the shape icons belonging to the stencil are now accompanied by descriptions.

Adding Backgrounds

To add a background for your drawing, first select the template that you want to use (from the Getting Started window), and then select the Backgrounds stencil by clicking on it when the Shapes pane opens.

When you select the Backgrounds stencil, a set of available backgrounds will appear in the pane.

To apply a background to your drawing, just use your mouse to drag the background of your choice from the Shapes pane over to the working area.

Now, the grid area where you create your drawing will display the background that you dragged over.

You don’t necessarily have to add your background first if you don’t want to. If you prefer, you can build your chart or diagram on the grid provided, and then add a background to your drawing. When you do this, your drawing will automatically appear on top of the background.

To remove a background, that you just added, click the Undo button ( ).

Adding Borders and Titles

To add borders and titles to your drawing, start by clicking the Borders and Titles stencil in the Shapes pane.

When you select the Borders and Titles stencil, a set of borders and titles will appear in the shapes pane. As with the backgrounds, just use your mouse to drag a border /title icon over to your working area to apply it to your drawing.

Once the border/title object that you drag over is in place; you can resize it to meet the requirements of your drawing.

To do this, use your mouse to drag the green resize handles to expand or contract the dimensions (height or width) of the border/title object.

In the image shown above, the green squares surrounding the border/title object are resize handles. If you drag one of the square handles that is not on a corner, the border/title object will contract or expand in the direction you drag the resize handle. (Handles on the top or bottom are for changing height, while handles on the left and right sides are for changing width).

If you drag a resize handle that is located in a corner, the object will contract or expand in two dimensions, (both width and height) depending on how you drag the resize handle.

Finally, if you drag the green circle at the top, the border title object will rotate clockwise or counter clockwise, depending on how you drag it.

To add the text for the title, double click on the title area. When you do this, the title area will become active and you will be able to type in the title that you want.

Just as with backgrounds, you can add title and border objects before or after you create a drawing by adding shapes. If you add a background to a drawing that contains a title and border, the title and border will appear on top of the newly added background

Adding Shapes

You can add shapes to your drawing in an exactly similar way. Just select the stencil of your choice to display the available shape objects in the Shapes pane, and then drag the shape that you want into position on your diagram/drawing area.

Remember, you can add your shapes first, and then add a background and tile and border; or you can add a background and title/border first. The choice is up to you.

The following image shows a simple flowchart diagram containing shapes, a background, and a title/border.

Lesson 2.2: Basic Editing Commands

Now that you know the basics of adding shapes, backgrounds, and tile/borders to your drawings, it is time to learn how to modify and edit the shapes in your drawings.

In this lesson, you will learn how to select shapes, how to use the use the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands, and how to use the Undo and Redo commands. In addition, you will also learn how to Resize, Move, and duplicate the shapes in your drawing.

Selecting Shapes

It is easy to select a shape in Visio. To select a shape, just locate it in your drawing and then single click inside of it.

When you select a shape in this way, it will be surrounded by a green dashed border and small green squares as shown in the image above.

If you select a shape by clicking it, and then press and hold your Control button while you click on another shape, both of the shapes will be selected.

This can be a handy way of selecting two or more shapes. Just press and hold the Ctrl button while you click the shapes that you want to select.

If you click the Edit menu, and then click the select all option, (Ctrl + A keyboard shortcut) all of the shapes in your drawing will be selected.

(In the following image, all of the drawing’s shapes are selected by using the Select All option on the Edit menu).

You can also click the Select by Type option in the Edit menu to select shapes.

When you click this option, a Select by type dialogue will appear on your screen.

In the dialogue above, only the “Connector” checkbox has been checked. This means that when the OK button is pressed, all of the connectors in the drawing will be selected.

As you can see in the preceding image, all connectors have been selected (highlighted in pink) and surrounded by a green dashed box.

Finally, you can select objects in Visio by drawing around them with your mouse pointer. To do this, hold your left mouse button down and drag your mouse across your drawing area to create a green dashed shape that surrounds the item or items you want to select.

When you release your left mouse button after surrounding the object in question, the object will be selected.

To control how a selection will be drawn when you drag your mouse, click the small arrow by the pointer tool button on the standard toolbar.

When you click this small arrow, a pointer tool menu will appear with options for making rectangular (area select option) and elliptical/irregular (lasso select option) selections.

Just choose the option corresponding to the type of selection tool you want, and then drag your mouse to make your selections.

Note: if you use the Lasso Select option, you must draw your selection out so the end point of the dashed line meets up with the starting point. If you do not connect the end point with the starting point, a selection will not be made.

Using Cut, Copy, and Paste

Once you know how to select different shapes and objects in your drawings, it is easy to use the Cut, copy, and paste features.

To cut a shape object from your drawing, simply select it using the appropriate method, and then click the Cut button on the Standard toolbar.

When you click this button, the selected item will disappear from your screen! Be careful with what you are selecting when you use the Cut feature. If multiple shapes have been selected, Cut will remove all of them from the drawing.

As an alternative to using the Cut button, you can select an object in your drawing, and then click the edit menu followed by the cut option. This action will remove the selected object from your screen.

You can also cut an object from your drawing by selecting it, and then pressing the Ctrl key and the X key at the same time. When you perform this keyboard short cut, the selected object will be removed from the drawing.

When you cut an object from your drawing it will be removed from view, but it is still available in your computer’s memory because it is stored on the office Clip Board. When we discuss the Paste feature later in this lesson, you will learn how to paste objects from the clipboard into your drawing.

When you cut an object from your drawing, it is copied to the Office clipboard and removed from the screen. When you Copy an item, it is copied to the Office clipboard, but it also remains in the drawing.

To copy an item, select it using the appropriate selection method, and then click the Copy button on the standard toolbar.

The selected item will remain in its position in the drawing, but it will be copied into memory on the Office Clipboard.

You can also copy a shape by right clicking on the selected object, and then clicking the copy option from the popup menu.

(Note: you can also cut a selected object by right clicking on it and then choosing the Cut option from the popup menu).

Remember, the objects that you have selected will be the objects that are copied. If you select multiple objects in your drawing, they will all be copied to the clipboard.

Finally, you can copy an item (or multiple items) by making your selection and then pressing the Ctrl and C button on your keyboard (Ctrl + C shortcut).

If you have cut or copied a shape form your drawing, a copy of that shape is stored in your computer’s memory on the office Clipboard. Once you have an item on the clipboard, you can use the Paste feature to insert that item into the drawing you copied from, or another drawing altogether.

The general procedure for pasting is to switch to the drawing (or page in the drawing) that you want to paste into, and then click the Paste button to place the object on the clipboard into the currently displayed drawing area.

(The paste button is shown in the red box in the image above).

The last object that was copied to the Office clipboard will be pasted (inserted) into the currently displayed drawing.

Generally, the object on the clipboard will be pasted in the center of your working area.

If you want more control over where the shape is pasted into your drawing, you can zoom in on the drawing and use the scroll bars provided to move the drawing so that the location you want to paste to is centered in the working area.

You can also paste an object by clicking the Edit menu, and then clicking the Paste option.

The keyboard shortcut for the Paste feature is the Ctrl key and the V key (pressed at the same time).

Remember that you can select text in your drawing by dragging your mouse pointer over it to highlight it in blue.

You can use this selection technique to select paragraphs, individual words, or even individual characters.

Once you have selected some text, you can use any of the basic editing options to cut, copy, or paste the text as you require. You can copy text from one shape in your drawing, and then click on another shape to select it. If you then use the paste feature, you can paste the selected text inside the new shape.

When you copy and paste text, the formatting, color, and size of the text will be preserved.

Undo and Redo When you are creating a Visio drawing, it is quite possible that you will make a formatting change or remove an object; and then wish you hadn’t.

Thankfully, Visio provides an Undo feature that can help you recover from an unwanted change to your drawing.

If you click the Undo button (a blue arrow curving counterclockwise) on the standard toolbar, you can step back to the state your drawing was in before you performed your last action or modification.

For example, let’s say that you remove a shape from your drawing by selecting it and using the cut feature.

The image above shows the selected shape before it is cut from the form.

The following image shows the drawing after the shape has been cut.

In the next image you can see how the Undo button returns the drawing to the state it was in before the shape was cut.

If you continue to click the Undo button, successive modifications that you have made to your drawing will be undone (in order from last to first).

If you click the small arrow next to the Undo button, you will see a list of actions (that you performed on your drawing) that you can undo.

You can select adjacent items in this list (starting from the top) by letting your mouse hover over them. If you click your left mouse button, the selected actions will be undone.

When you undo an item, Visio allows you to redo the action that you have just undone. You can redo an action by clicking the Redo button on the Standard toolbar.

The redo feature is only accessible if you have previously undone an action. You can also continue to click the redo button to redo successive actions that where undone using the Undo button.

Just like the Undo button, the Redo button has a drop list that you can use to redo multiple actions that have been undone. To see the Redo list of actions, just click on the small black arrow next to the redo button.

Resizing Shapes

The first step in resizing a shape is to select it. Once a shape is selected, it will be surrounded by a green dashed border, and small green squares.

The green squares surrounding a shape are called resize handles. You can resize the selected shape by dragging on these handles with your mouse. If you drag a resize handle that is on the left or right side of the selected shape, the shape will expand or contract along the direction you drag (left or right). If you drag one of the resize handles on the top or bottom of a selected shape, the shape will expand or contract in the direction you drag (up or down).

If you drag a resize handle that is on the corner of a selected shape, the shape’s size will expand or contract in two dimensions (width and height) depending on the direction in which you drag.

The following image shows a shape that has been selected by clicking on it.

To increase the length of the shape, we can drag the resize handle shown in the red box toward the right.

The following image shows the result of this action.

If we wanted to decrease the height of the shape, we could drag the resize handle on the bottom of the selected shape, up towards the top.

The result of this action is shown in the following image.

Finally, if we drag one of the resize handles on the corner of selection area, the shape’s height and width will both change depending on the direction in which we drag. (The shape will shrink if we drag inwards toward the center of the shape, and it will grow if we drag outward).

Moving Shapes

To move a shape in Visio, first let your mouse pointer hover inside the shape. When you do this, your mouse pointer should change into a crossed arrow.

When you see this crossed arrow pointer, you will be able to move the shape by holding your left mouse button and dragging it.

Once you have placed the shape in the location that you want, release your left mouse button. The shape you dragged will now be located in its new position, and removed from its old position.

Furthermore, when you select a shape, you will see a small green circle at the top of the selection area.

If you drag this small circle with your mouse, you can rotate the selected shape clockwise or counter clockwise (depending on which way you drag).

Remember, you can always cut or copy a shape, and then paste it to move it to another drawing, (or another page in the same drawing file).

Note: You can also slowly move a shape in small increments by first selecting the shape, and then using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Just press the arrow key that corresponds to the direction that you want to move the shape in. The selected shape will move incrementally, each time you press an arrow key.

Duplicating Shapes

You have just learned how to move a shape by dragging it with our mouse. You can duplicate an existing shape in your drawing, by using a very similar technique.

To duplicate a shape, place your mouse pointer inside of it as before; but this time, when you see the crossed arrow mouse pointer, press and hold the Ctrl button on your computer keyboard. When you do this, your mouse pointer will turn into a small plus sign (+).

Now, when you drag the shape (using the plus sign (+) mouse pointer), the shape will be duplicated, and the duplicate copy will be position at the location that you drop it (release your left mouse button).

In the following image, the square shape has been duplicated by dragging it while holding the Ctrl button.

Lesson 2.3: Formatting Shapes

At this point, you should be able to add shapes to a drawing, resize and move shapes, and copy cut and paste drawing shapes/objects.

Now, the next step is to learn how to format the shapes in your drawing. In this lesson, you will learn how to change the line style for a shape, how to change the fill color, and how to modify corner rounding. In addition, you will learn how to add shadows, use themes, and use the format painter.

Changing Line Style

To change the line style for a shape, click the shape to select it, and then click the Format menu followed by the Line option.

When you perform this action, a Line dialogue box (like the one shown on the following page) will appear on your screen.

In the top part of the dialogue, you can see drop list fields labeled Pattern, Weight, and Color. If you click the arrow at the right of the Pattern drop list, you will see a list of pattern options that you can choose from for your shape’s lines.

By default, the first option (a solid unbroken line) is used for your shapes.

If you display the Weight drop list, you will see a set of options for specifying the thickness of the lines in your shape.

If you click the Custom option at the bottom of this list, a small custom box will appear that you can use to manually enter a specific value for line thickness.

Once you enter a custom line weight, click the OK button in the small box. The value that you specified will be entered in to the Weight field in the Line dialogue box.

Further down, you will see a Color drop menu. If you display this menu, you will see an assortment of colors from which you can choose.

You can select a color for your shape’s lines by clicking the color square of your choice.

On the right side of the line dialogue, you will see another series of dialogues that let you specify how a line should begin and end (what type of arrow head starts and terminates a line).

The Begin size and End size options help you specify how large the beginning head or the terminal head of a line will be.

Note: typically, shapes have no line beginnings or ends (think of a circle), so the Line ends options do not really apply.

You would typically use the line ends options when you are dealing with basic lines, not complex shapes.

The following image shows a basic Visio flow‐chart shape.

The next image shows the Line dialogue options after the Line pattern, Line weight, and Line color have been changed for the selected shape.

In the Preview box, you can see a preview of what the lines in the selected shape will look like.

To implement your settings without closing the Line dialogue, click the Apply button. To implement your settings and close the Line dialogue, click the OK button.

The following image shows the shape after the line changes.

In the Line dialogue, you may also have noticed a Cap field and a Transparency slider.

There are three options that you can select for the Cap field, (Round, Square and Extended). These settings can change how the segments in a broken line pattern look.

The Transparency slider can control how much of the background or underlying shapes can be seen through the lines. By increasing the transparency (moving the slider to the right), you can increase the amount of background that can be seen through the lines in your shape and decrease the amount of color that can be seen in the lines.

(The image above shows a shape with the lines set at 80% transparency.)

Changing Fill Color

You can change the fill color of a shape by first selecting it, and then displaying the fill color menu from the Formatting toolbar.

When you choose a color from the fill color menu, it will be applied to the selected shape.

You can also specify a fill color for a shape by selecting the given shape, and then clicking the format menu followed by the Fill option.

When you perform this action, you will see a fill dialogue appear on your screen. In the Fill dialogue, you will see options for specifying the Color, Pattern, Pattern color, and Transparency of the fill effect.

Just like the Line dialogue, the fill dialogue will display an example of what your fill will look like in the preview area.

The following image shows the dialogue after choosing a color, a pattern, and a transparency level for the fill.

When the OK button is clicked in the dialogue, the fill settings will be implemented in the selected shape and the Fill dialogue will close.

Adding Shadows

If you select a shape and then click the Format menu followed by the Shadows option, you will see the Shadow dialogue appear.

If you display the drop list for the Style option in the Shadow dialogue, you will see a list of possible shadow styles that you can choose from.

To choose a shadow style, just click on the appropriate item from the list. You can also choose a color for the shadow, a fill pattern for the shadow, and a transparency level by using the color option, the pattern option, and the transparency slider respectively.

The following image shows the Shadow dialogue after a shadow style, color, pattern, and transparency have been selected.

If you look carefully at the dialogue, you can get an idea of what your shadow will look like in the Preview area.

When you click the OK button in the dialogue, your shadow settings will be implemented on the selected shape.

There are also options in the Shadow dialogue that allow you to change the shadows position by clicking arrow buttons.

You can see the buttons with black arrows in the image above. If you click these arrows, the shadow will move a tiny amount in the direction corresponding to the arrow you click. These changes will be reflected in the preview area so you can see how you are changing the shadow.

You should notice that there is also a slider switch available to increase the magnification of the shadow (the size of the shadow with respect to the shape).

Modifying Corners

If you select a shape, click the Format menu, and then click the Corner rounding button, you will see a dialogue that looks like the following:

With this dialogue, you can click a button to select the type of corners that will appear in your shape. When you select a corner type, you will see what it looks like in the preview area.

For example, in the image above, the square corner button is selected, and the rounding value (displayed in the dialogue’s Rounding field) is zero. As you can see in the preview, the corners are not rounded.

In the following image, a rounded corner button has been selected, and you can see the difference in the preview area.

If you wish, you can even enter your own rounding value in the Rounding field provided. When you have finished setting up the corner rounding, click the OK button in the dialogue to implement your settings.

Using Themes

In Visio 2007, there are two types of themes that you can apply to a drawing. You can apply a color theme, or an effect theme. Basically, a color theme is a pre‐set collection of complimentary colors that can be applied to a drawing (shapes, lines, and text) all at once.

Since the colors in a theme have been carefully chosen to complement each other, your drawing will take on a consistent professional look when a color theme is used.

A theme effect is a set of different line patterns, fill effects, corner rounding, and shading that has been brought together as a theme. Color themes and theme effects provide a quick and easy way to improve the visual impact of your Visio drawings.

To apply a color theme to your drawing, just click the View menu followed by the task pane option.

When you follow these options, a task pane will appear on the right side of the Visio screen.

The task pane shown above is the Color Theme pane. If this is not the task pane that appears on your Visio screen, click the down pointing arrow at the top of whatever task pane appears, to display a list of the available task panes.

When you click this arrow, a menu of task pane options will be displayed.

When the task pane menu appears, click on the Theme‐Color option to display the Theme‐Color task pane on your screen.

When you see the Theme‐Color task pane on your screen, just click one of the color themes provided in the pane to apply it to your drawing.

Near the top of the Theme –Color task pane, you will see a Theme Effects link. Click this link to display the Them‐Effects task pane.

When the Theme Effects task pane appears, you will see a variety of effects themes listed in the pane. The effects themes will be have preview thumbnails that show the currently active color theme.

Examine the theme effects preview thumbnails carefully. You should notice subtle differences in the hoe the corners are rounded, the line patterns, the shading, and more. When you find an effects theme that you like, just click the thumbnail to apply it to your drawing.

You can quickly and easily display the theme color task pane at any time by clicking the theme button on the formatting toolbar.

You can also display the theme task pane by clicking the Format menu, followed by the Theme option (as shown in the following image).

Using the Format Painter If you have different shapes with different formats in your drawing, you can use the Format Painter tool to apply the formatting of one shape to another.

To do this, click on the shape with the formatting that you want to copy. Once the shape is selected, click the Format Painter button (paint brush) on the standard toolbar.

In the sample image above, the purple shape has been selected and the Format Painter button has been clicked.

At this point, the next step is to select the shape that you want to apply the format to, by clicking it with your mouse. As soon as you select another shape, the format of the shape that you selected first, (before you clicked the format painter button) will be applied to the newly selected shape.

In the image above, a second shape has been selected after clicking the Format Painter button. (The second shape has assumed the format of the first shape.)

Once again, the procedure is to first select a shape with a format that you want to apply somewhere else and then click the Format Painter button. Once you have done this, the format of the shape you selected will be applied to the next shape that you select.

This process also works in an exactly similar way for the text in your drawings. Just select the text with the formatting that you want to copy, click the Format Painter button, and then select the text that you want to apply the formatting to.

You will learn more about using text in Visio in the next few lessons.

Lesson 2.4: Adding Text

No matter how you design your Visio chart or diagram, you will no doubt want to add textual explanations, labels, and annotations to it.

In this lesson, you will learn how to enhance your Visio drawings Using Text boxes, and Text blocks. You will also learn about typing and editing text, and how to insert symbols into your Visio drawings.

Using the Text Box Tool

A text box is a rectangular area in your drawing that is designated for containing text. You can provide explanations, comments, instructions, or pretty much whatever message you want in a text box.

To create a text box in Visio, first click the Insert menu followed by the Text Box option.

When you perform this action, your mouse pointer will turn into a plus (+) sign when you let it hover over the working area.

At this point, you can just drag your mouse to draw out a box or rectangle that will hold text.

Once the box is drawn on your working area, you can enter whatever text and text formatting that you want.

Once you have created a textbox in your drawing, you can select it by clicking in it with your mouse.

Once the text box is selected, you can rotate it and resize it much like any other shape. You can even move the text box by dragging it by its dashed border.

(Remember, you can make it easier to enter and format text by zooming in on the working area).

You can also create a text box by clicking the Text tool button on the Standard toolbar.

When you click this button (the one with the letter A on it), your mouse pointer will turn into a plus sign when it is over the drawing area. At this point, you can draw out a text box just as before.

Using the Text Block Tool

Let’s suppose that you have added a shape to your drawing and you would like to place some text in it.

If you double click inside the shape, you will see a text block appear.

When the text block appears inside a shape, you will be able to add text at the curser and format the added text as you wish. A text block is really very much like a text box in this regard.

A text block is a kind of text box that is attached to a shape. If you move or resize the shape, the text block will move with it. The important thing about text blocks; is that you can also manipulate them independently of the shape that they belong to.

If you click the Small arrow next to the Text button on the standard toolbar, you will see two options appear. One of these options will be the text block tool.

If you click on the Text Block tool option, you mouse pointer will change to a plus (+) sign when it hovers over your drawing area. When you are using the text block tool, you can click on the text in a shape with the plus sign (+) pointer to select the text block independently of the shape that contains it.

Once the text block has been selected, you can resize it, move it, and rotate it just as you would a regular shape. When you move or rotate the text box, the text that it contains will be moved or rotated with it.

In the image above, you can see how the text block has been rotated independently of the shape by using the text block tool.

To change your mouse pointer back to the standard arrow head, (when you are finished with the text block tool), just click the Pointer tool button on the standard toolbar.

Typing and Editing Text

Once you have a text box on your Visio drawing area, or a text block in a shape, you can add text just by tying it at the curser in the given text box or block.

When you are typing text in Visio, spelling mistakes will be automatically underlined with a red wavy line (as shown below).

If you select the misspelled word, (or click on it to place your curser there) and then click the Spell button on the standard toolbar, you will see a list of possible spellings for the word in question.

At this point, you can select a word from the list by clicking it, and then click the Change button to change the misspelled word to the word that you just selected.

If you want, you can also choose to ignore the mistake.

To edit text that you enter into a text box or text block, you can click to place your curser in any position in the text, and use the backspace key on your keyboard to remove individual characters.

You can also select individual words or groups of words by dragging your mouse pointer over them so that they are highlighted in blue.

In the image that follows, the words “Here is a” have been selected.

You can quickly delete selected words by hitting the backspace button on your keyboard. When you do this, all words highlighted in blue will be removed.

If you use the Copy feature in Visio (lesson 2.2) the selected text will be copied to the clip board. If you use the Cut feature, the selected text will be copied to the clipboard and removed from the screen.

Once some selected text has been copied to the clipboard, you can paste it elsewhere by using the paste feature.

Remember, you can place a text block in a shape by double clicking in the shape. When the text box appears, it will contain a curser which you can use to type text.

Inserting Symbols

To insert a symbol (not found on your keyboard) into your text, first place the curser at the point where you want the symbol to appear. Next, click the Insert menu followed by the Symbol option.

When you perform this action, a symbol dialogue will appear on your screen as shown on the following page.

At this point, you can select a symbol by clicking on it to highlight it, and then clicking the Insert button. You can display subsets of symbols in the Symbol dialogue box by choosing an item from the Subset drop list in the upper right.

You can also use the scroll bar at the right of the dialogue to scroll down though the available symbols.

In the following image, a summation sign from the Mathematical Operators subset is about to be inserted. (The selected symbol is highlighted in blue).

You can also specify a font for the symbols displayed in the dialogue by selecting an option from the Font drop list.

Please note: The specific symbols that are available in the Symbol dialogue can change depending on which font you choose.

You can also click the Special characters tab to display a selection of special characters that you can insert into your text.

To insert a special character, just select it from the list and then click the Insert button. The special character will then be inserted at the position of the curser.

Lesson 2.5: Formatting Text

Now that you know how to add text to your drawings and shapes, it is time to learn how to format your text.

In this lesson, you will learn how to add basic text effects, change the color of selected text, and change the font type and the size of selected text.

In addition, you will also learn how to use the alignment tools to align you text for a clean professional look.

Adding Basic Effects

Basic text effects include such font styles as bold, italic, and underlined. To apply one or more of these effects to your text, start by selecting the text with your mouse so that it is highlighted in blue.

Next, just click the button from the formatting task bar that corresponds to the effect that you want to apply.

You can apply one or more of the font effects shown in the red rectangle just by clicking on them.

In the following image, the word “text” has had all three effects (Bold, Italic, and Underline) applied to it.

If you select text that already has effects applied to it, you will see the buttons corresponding to the effects highlighted in orange in the formatting toolbar.

In the image shown above, the selected text is bold and italic.

To remove an effect from your text, select the text and click the button corresponding to the effect that you want to remove (so that the button is no longer highlighted in orange).

When the button is deselected, the given effect will disappear from the selected text.

Changing Text Color

To change the color of your text, first select it with your mouse.

Next, click the small arrow next to the Text Color button on the Formatting toolbar.

In the color menu that appears, you will see two groups of colors. You will see a selection of theme colors, and a selection of standard colors.

The theme colors are provided so that you can choose a color that is complimentary to the currently selected theme. Of course, if you wish, you can easily choose one of the standard colors as well.

The theme colors that are available will depend on the theme that is currently being used.

When you find a color in the color menu that you want to apply to your selected text, just click on its color square in the menu. The color you clicked will now be applied to the text.

If you look at the Text Color button, you will see a thick band of color underneath the letter A.

This thick band of color shows what color is currently being used. If you type something, it will appear in this color. If you select some text in your drawing and click the Text Color button (without displaying the color menu) the selected text will appear in this color.

Whenever you want to make the default (black) color the active text color, just click the Use Default option on the text color menu.

Changing Font Type and Size

To change the font type of your text, select the text you want to change, and then choose a font type from the Font drop list on the formatting toolbar.

You can display the Font drop list by clicking the small arrow next to the Font field in the formatting toolbar.

When you click on a Font in the list, it will be applied to the selected text.

In the Image that follows, a Courier New font has been applied to the text. You should notice that the Font field in the formatting toolbar displays the words “Courier New”. This means that the Courier New font is the currently active font, and any text that is entered will appear in this font.

To change the current font, just use the font drop list to select another font type. If you know the name of the font that you want, you can also type the font name directly into the font field.

You can change the size of your text in an exactly similar way. First, just select the text that you want to resize, and then choose a size value from the Font Size drop list (located in the formatting toolbar right next to the Font type field).

Your selected text will assume a size that corresponds to the value you choose from the Font size list. Moreover, the font size you selected will now be the current font size (displayed in the font size field).

When you type new text, it will appear in the size that is currently specified in the font size field.

Aligning Text

Aligning your text is just a simple matter of clicking the appropriate alignment button from the Formatting toolbar.

When you select text in a shape or elsewhere in your drawing, the button corresponding to the text’s current alignment will be highlighted in the formatting toolbar. To apply a different alignment to the selected text, just click the alignment button corresponding to the type of text alignment that you want.

The Align Left button will align selected text so that it is justified to the left side of the text box or block that contains it.

The Align Center button will align selected text so that it is centered in the box or block that contains it.

Finally, the Align Right button will align the selected text to the right of the box or block that contains it.

Remember, you can select text in a shape by double clicking inside the shape. When you do this, the shape’s text block will appear and all of the text in the text block will be selected.

If you want to select specific sections of text in a text block, follow the procedure given just above to display the text block and select all of the text. Next, deselect the text in the text block by single clicking; and then drag you mouse to select the specific part of the text that you need.

Lesson 2.6: Working with Pages

There may be times when a single page does not give you enough room to do what you want with your drawing file. For example, you may want to have multiple diagrams in a single drawing file; or, you may want to have a chart on a different page that links to a particular part of a drawing on another separate page.

To deal with situations like this, you must learn to manage multiple open pages in Visio 2007.

In this lesson, you will learn about Adding pages, Switching between open pages, and Removing Pages. To close the lesson, you learn how to use the Page Setup dialogue.

Adding Pages

When you start a drawing in Visio, you will see a page tab at the bottom of the drawing area.

In the example image above, the page tab is shown in the red rectangle. When you first create drawing in Visio, a single page is provided by default.

To create an additional page, you should first right click on the page tab at the bottom of the screen to display a popup menu.

When the popup menu appears on the screen, you should click the Insert Page option.

When you click the Insert Page option, the Page setup dialogue will appear on your screen.

The Page Setup dialogue should automatically open to the Page Properties tab. Under this tab, you will see a Name field containing the name of the new page. By default, Visio will name the pages in a drawing in a numbered sequence, like Page‐1, Page‐2, Page‐3, and so on.

To create a new page for your drawing, enter a name for the page in the Name field (or accept the default name), and then click the OK button in the lower right. (We will deal with some of the details of the Page Setup dialogue later in this lesson).

Once you click the OK button, you should see a new page tab appear at the bottom of the drawing area on the Visio screen.

The page tab for the currently active page will be displayed in white with the page name in bold font. As you can see from the image above, Page‐2 is the currently active page. The tabs for the other pages in the drawing will be grey with a standard font.

You can use the methods described above to add as many pages to your drawing as you require. When you create a page in this way, the new page will have the same size, measurement units, scale, shadow offset, and grid settings as the page that is currently active.

Switching Between Open Pages

The in the following image of a Visio drawing, you can see that there are three pages.

The foreground page (the one that is displayed in the working area) is Page‐1. If you want to switch to another page, just click the appropriate page tab. When you click on a page tab, the corresponding page will become the foreground page, allowing you to edit and modify it.

In the following image, Page‐2 has been opened, by clicking its page tab.

If there are too many page tabs to be displayed under the working area, you can use the page navigation buttons to bring additional page tabs into view.

If you click this page navigation button, (the one in the red square) the page tabs will be displayed starting with the first on the left (as shown just below).

If you click this page navigation button, the page tabs will be displayed showing the last page on the right.

If you click on one of the center page navigation buttons the list of page tabs will scroll one tab to the left or right (as indicated by the direction of the arrow on the button you push).

If you wish, you can also use your mouse to drag the left edge of the scroll bar underneath the working area to the right, to reveal more space for the page tabs (as shown in the following image).

Removing Pages

To remove a page from your drawing, just right click on the page tab corresponding to the page that you want to remove.

When the popup menu appears, click the Delete Page option to remove the page form the drawing. When you do this, the page and its tab will disappear from the Visio screen.

You should also notice that there are options to Rename the page, and Reorder the pages available on the menu.

Note: The method described above works when the pages have been named by the user. If you have created pages with the default Visio names (Page‐1, Page‐2, Page‐3, and so on), the most recently inserted page (the page with the highest number) will be deleted when you click the Delete page option.

The Page Setup Dialogue

You can use the page setup dialogue to specify a wide variety of options for your Visio drawing pages.

The dialogue will appear automatically when you insert a new page, but you can also access it for an existing page by making the page active, (making it the foreground page), and then clicking the File menu followed by the Page Setup option.

In the Page Setup dialogue, you will see a row of six tabs across the top of the dialogue box. The first of these six tabs is called the Print Setup tab.

1. Paper Setup The paper size drop list will allow you to select from a list of paper sizes that are supported by your current printer.

2. Paper Orientation The portrait and Landscape radio buttons orient the print out of the current page vertically (Portrait), or horizontally (Landscape).

If you click the Print Setup button, you will see a print setup dialogue appear with options for specifying margins and other settings.

3. Print Zoom The Print Zoom settings allow you to change the size of the drawing for printing purposes. The actual drawing size of the actual page is not changed by these settings; only the printed version is changed.

4. Gridlines The Gridlines option controls whether or not the drawing page gridlines are included in your print out. If this checkbox is clear, the gridlines will not be printed.

The next tab in the Page Setup dialogue is the Page Size tab.

1. Same as Paper Size If this radio button is selected, the size of your Visio drawing page will match the size of the printer paper specified in the Print setup tab.

The Page Orientation option at the bottom will only be accessible if the Same as Printer Paper Size option (1) at the top is not selected. The page orientation option will orient the actual Visio drawing page vertically (portrait) or horizontally (landscape).

2. Pre‐Defined Size The Pre‐Defined size options allow you to set your Visio drawing size to pre‐defined paper size dimensions. The pre defined sizes may include: standard sizes, ANSI engineering sizes, ANSI architectural sizes, and Metric sizes.

3. Custom Size The Custom Size option allows you to manually specify the size of the Visio drawing page by entering values into the field provided.

4. Size to Fit Drawing The Size to Fit Drawing Contents option makes the size of the Visio drawing page just big enough to contain the shapes currently used in the drawing.

The next tab in the Page Setup dialogue is the Drawing Scale tab.

1. No Scale Under this tab you will be able to specify that the drawing page is un‐scaled by clicking the No Scale radio button.

2. Pre‐Defined Scale You can also choose a pre‐defined drawing scale (architectural, metric, or others) for your Visio drawing page by selecting the Pre‐defined scale radio button and then choosing from the drop list options.

3. Custom Scale You can manually enter a custom drawing scale by selecting the Custom Scale radio button and using the fields provided.

4. Page Size Fields Finally, you can use the Page size fields to specify the actual (real) dimensions of what you are drawing. For example, if you are laying out a floor plan for a room using Visio Professional, you could enter the actual room size in these fields.

The next tab is the Page Properties tab. Note: this is the tab that is displayed automatically when you first insert a new page into Visio.

1. Page Properties With the first radio button option, you can choose if the page will be a foreground page or a background page. A background page can be used as a background for a diagram on another page. If you specify a new page as a background page, it will appear in the background drop list (3) when you view the page properties of another page in the drawing.

2. Name Field In the Name field you can enter a name for the page.

3. Background List You can use the Background drop list to choose a background for the page. Any backgrounds used in the pages of the current drawing file will b available in the list.

4. Measurement Finally, you can use the Measurement unit drop list to choose Units the units implemented on the rulers in the Visio drawing area.

The next tab available in the Page setup box is the Layout and Routing tab.

1. Style List Under the Routing heading, you will see a Style drop list. You can set up how the connectors in your diagram are routed with the options in this Style list. When you select an option, check the preview area on the right to see how it will look.

2. Direction List In the Direction drop list you can specify the direction of your diagram flow (i.e. top to bottom, right to left, left to right).

3. Separate List The Separate drop list provides options for specifying how overlapping connector lines will be separated.

4. Overlap List The Overlap drop list, on the other hand, provides options to specify how separated connector lines are overlapped.

5. Appearance With the Appearance option you can specify if the connectors Options that you add to your drawing will be curved or straight.

6. Line Jumps Finally, you can use the Line Jump options to specify what happens when connector lines intersect.

If you click the Spacing button in the lower right of the Layout and Routing tab, you will display a Layout and Routing Spacing dialogue as shown below.

You can use the options in this Spacing dialogue to set up how shapes and connectors are spaced in a drawing.

The last tab in the Page setup dialogue is the Shadows tab.

1. Style List Under this tab, you can specify a shadow style for the page using the Style drop list. You can see what the shadow style that you select looks like in the preview area.

If you want shapes that you add to your drawing to adhere to the shadow style specified for the page; you should click the Format menu, followed by the Shadow option to display the Shadow dialogue box. Then, in the Style drop list of the Shadow dialogue, select the Page Default option.

2. Size and Position Finally, you can use the Size and Position options to precisely specify the position and size of the shadow relative to the shape.

Remember; you will find a help icon in the lower left of each tab in the Page Setup dialogue.

If you click the help icon, a Visio help window will open with information related to the options in the currently selected tab.

You should also remember to click the OK button in the bottom of the Page Setup dialogue when you are finished setting up your options.

Section 2: Review Questions

1. The shapes pane can display… A. The shapes available in a stencil B. The backgrounds available in a stencil C. The borders/titles available in a stencil D. All of the above

2. To select a shape you can… A. Draw a selection around the shape B. Click on the shape C. Let you mouse pointer hover over the shape D. Press the Ctrl + S shortcut

3. You can use the Format menu to access options for… A. Modifying shadows B. Modifying lines C. Modifying the shape data D. All of the above

4. A text block is used to… A. Add text to a shape B. Add pages to a drawing C. Add headers and footers D. None of the above

5. Some of the ways that you can format text in Visio are… A. Change the Font type B. Change the Font size C. Change the Text color D. All of the above

6. You can add pages in Visio by… A. Clicking the new page button on the formatting toolbar B. Right clicking on an existing page tab and choosing the Insert Page option C. You cannot create multiple pages for a single drawing in Visio D. None of the above

7. In Visio, symbols are…. A. Special stencil types

B. Characters that may not be easy to access on the keyboard C. Characters used in mathematics only D. None of the above

8. The term “weight” refers to a line’s…. A. Thickness B. Color C. Mass D. Length

9. The basic text effects (bold, italic, and underline) are available on the… A. Standard toolbar B. Formatting toolbar C. View menu D. File menu

10. The term Arial refers to a … A. Sans Serif font type B. A light blue color C. A font that looks like hand writing D. None of the above

Section 3: Doing More with Your Drawing

In this section you will learn how to: Add shapes from the File menu and Standard toolbar Add screen tips to shapes Group and layer collections of shapes Rotate and flip shapes Align and distribute shapes Use Snap and Glue Use double‐click behaviors Connect shapes together Configure a shape layout Add data to shapes and use other shape operations Show or hide layers of information Activate a layer Preserve group member properties Color and lock layers Insert a comment Insert an image/picture and format it Add a chart or equation Add a hyperlink Insert an external object Insert a CAD drawing Insert a control

Lesson 3.1: Other Ways to Add Shapes

In the previous sections, you learned how to create a Visio drawing by selecting a template from the Getting Stated window. You also learned how to use the Shapes pane to add shapes to your drawing.

In addition, you learned how to add and format text, and how to create and set up new pages. Using this knowledge as a base, it is now time to move on to more advanced Visio drawing tasks.

In this next lesson, you will learn some of the other ways that you can add shapes and access the preset stencils and shapes available in Visio. You will learn how to access shape stencils from the File menu, and from the Standard toolbar. You will also learn how to draw basic shapes with the drawing toolbar, and how to add screen tips to a shape.

Adding Shapes from the File Menu

To access shapes using the File menu, first open Visio 2007 and then click the New button on the standard toolbar to create a new blank drawing.

Next, click the File menu heading on the main menu bar to display the file menu options. When the File menu appears, follow the Shapes option, choose a general category (like business) and choose a category option that best represents the type of drawing that you want to create (like charts and graphs).

At this point, you should see a sub menu of stencil options that you can choose from.

(In the sample image above, the stencil options shown were reached by following the File | Shapes |Business | Charts and Graphs menu options).

Next, choose a stencil from among the options provided that is closest to the type of drawing that you want to create.

In this example, the stencil option used is “Marketing Diagrams (Metric)”.

As a result of following these options, the Shapes pane will now be populated with the shapes corresponding to the stencil that is selected.

At this point, you can go ahead and create your drawings as before, by dragging shapes from the shapes pane over to the drawing area (as shown in the following image).

Note: If you want to use the Getting Started Window, but it is not on your Visio screen, you can click the File Menu, followed by the New option, followed by the Getting Started Option.

Once you follow these options, the Getting Started Window will appear on your screen.

Accessing Shapes from the Standard Toolbar

You can also access the preset stencils and shapes in Visio by using the Shapes button on the standard toolbar.

When you click this button, a menu of shapes categories will appear on the screen. You can then follow the menu options to choose a set (stencil) of shapes in a way that is exactly similar to the method described above for the File menu.

Once you choose the shapes stencil that you think will best meet your needs, the shapes will appear in the Shapes pane on the left.

Once the shapes are available, you can add them as before by dragging them over to the drawing area (grid).

Using the Drawing Tools Toolbar

If you right click on some empty space on the Menu bar or a toolbar, you will see a menu of toolbar options appear

You can display the Drawing toolbar on your Visio screen by clicking the Drawing option on this toolbar menu (as shown above).

When the drawing toolbar appears, it will look like the following:

To use this toolbar to create a shape in your drawing, you must first click on one of the shape tools available on the toolbar. These tools are (from left to right on the toolbar): the Rectangle tool, the Ellipse tool, the Line tool, the Arc tool, the Free form tool, and the Pencil tool.

In the following example, the rectangle tool has been clicked. Now, the user can use the mouse pointer to drag out a rectangle on the drawing area.

You can add other shapes from the Drawing toolbar in a similar way. Just click the tool that you want to use on the toolbar, and then use your mouse pointer to draw the shape on the drawing area.

In the preceding image, the Ellipse tool has been used to draw out an oval in the drawing area.

You can use the Arc tool to draw graceful curves:

You can also use the Free form tool to create irregular shapes:

Finally, you can use the Pencil tool to draw shapes that are constructed from straight or curved lines. You can drag an anchor point (small green diamond) to skew the straight lines created with the pencil tool. You can also drag one of the small green circles, to add curvature to the line segment that the circle is attached to.

As is the case with standard shapes; you can double click in a shape that was drawn from a shape tool and create a text block. You can then add and format text inside the shape.

Adding Shape Screen Tips

In Visio, it is easy to add a screen tip to a shape. To do this, first click con the shape to select it, and then click the Insert menu followed by the Shape Screen Tip option.

Once the shape Screen Tip dialogue appears on the Visio screen; type the screen‐tip in the area provided and then click the OK button in the dialogue.

When you click the Ok button in the dialogue, the screen tip you typed will be implemented for the selected shape. This means that when a mouse pointer hovers over the shape for a moment, the screen tip will appear over the shape in a yellow box, something like the one shown below.

Lesson 3.2: Working With Shapes

The quality of the charts and diagrams that you create in Visio will largely depend on how well you can arrange and manipulate shapes. With this idea in mind, you will now start to learn about some more advanced ways of working with shapes.

In this lesson you will learn about grouping shapes, layering shapes, and rotating and flipping shapes. To close off the lesson, you will learn more about aligning and distributing shapes, and finally, how to use the snap and Glue features.

Grouping Shapes

If you create a lot of drawings in Visio, there will surely come a time when you have to rearrange some of the shapes in a particular drawing.

Let’s look at the following image of a Visio diagram as an example.

Now, suppose that you wanted to move the column of four rectangles on the left of the diagram so they are directly under the diamond shape. You could reposition each rectangle individually by dragging it with your mouse, or you could use Visio’s shape grouping feature.

To collect multiple shapes together in a group, select them by holding the Ctrl button as you click on the shapes, or by dragging a selection rectangle around the shapes with your mouse.

Once the multiple shapes are selected, click the Shape menu followed by the Grouping option, followed by the Group option:

(You can also select the shapes that you want in your group, and then use the Ctrl +Shift + G keyboard shortcut to create a group).

Once you perform this action, you will be able to select the multiple shapes as a single group, just by clicking on any shape in the group.

Once the group of shapes is selected, it can be moved as a group by dragging it with your mouse. If you want to select an individual shape within the group, click on a shape to select the group first, and then click within the group on the shape that you want to select individually.

The image on the following page shows the group of shapes from our example being moved together so that they are located beneath the diamond shape.

Layering Shapes

In Visio, you can create layers that can have different shapes assigned o them. When you use layers, you are able to gain separate control over the shapes that are assigned to a layer. That is to say, when a layer contains a selection of shapes, you can choose to view, print, color, or lock those shapes independently of the shapes that are on other layers in your drawing.

Layers will be dealt with in more detail in lesson 3.4; but for now, you will learn the simple task of assigning a shape to a layer.

To assign a shape to an existing layer, first select the shape you want to assign from your drawing. Once the shape is selected, click the Format menu followed by the Layer option.

Performing this action will display the Layer dialogue. In this dialogue, click to put a check mark in the checkbox corresponding to the layer that you want to assign the shape to.

Once you are ready, click the OK button to implement your choice.

Note: A single shape can be assigned to multiple layers.

Rotating and Flipping Shapes

You already know how to rotate a shape by dragging the green circle (rotate handle) that appears above a shape when it is selected. The following discussion deals with more options for rotating and flipping Visio shapes.

To rotate or flip a shape, you must first select it by clicking on it. Once the shape in question is selected, you can click the Shape menu followed by the Rotate and Flip option to reveal a sub menu of options for rotating and/or flipping your shape.

If you click the Rotate Left option, the selected shape will be rotated 90 degrees to the left. If you click the rotate Right option, the shape will be rotated 90 degrees to the right.

If you click the Flip Horizontal option, the selected shape will be flipped around its vertical axis.

Here is an image of a shape before it is flipped horizontally.

Here is an image of the same shape after it has been flipped horizontally.

If you click the Flip Vertical option, the shape will be flipped around its horizontal axis. The image shows a shape before it is flipped vertically.

The next image shows the same shape after it has been flipped vertically.

You can also rotate a shape and then flip it, or flip the shape first and then rotate it.

Aligning and Distributing Shapes

When you have an assortment of different shapes in your drawing, you can use Visio’s Aligning and distributing tools to help arrange them.

In the following image, you can see three shapes scattered over the drawing grid.

To align these shapes, first click to select the one shape that you want to align the other shapes to.

Once you have selected your shape, hold the Ctrl button and click the other shapes that you want to align with the first shape. When you do this, the initial shape will be surrounded by a heavy magenta border. Each shape that will be aligned with the initial shape will be surrounded by a thin magenta border.

Look at the following image and take not of the borders surrounding the shapes. The rectangle on the left is the shape that the other two shapes will be aligned with.

Once you have selected the shapes that you want to align, click the Shape menu followed by the Align Shapes option.

When you click the Align Shapes option, an align shapes dialogue will appear on your screen.

To align the shapes, just click the button in the dialogue that best represent how you want the shapes to be aligned. (The graphics on the buttons provide a preview of how the shapes will be aligned).

Once you have selected an alignment button, click the OK button in the dialogue to go ahead and align the shapes.

You can also distribute shapes in Visio by using the Distribute option on the Shape menu. For example, the following image shows four, somewhat jumbled shapes.

To distribute these shapes more evenly, we should first select them by drawing a rectangle around them with the mouse pointer (or clicking on the shapes while holding the Ctrl button).

Once the shapes have been selected, you can click the Shapes menu followed by the Distribute Shapes option (as shown in the following image).

When you click the Distribute Shapes menu option, a Distribute Shapes dialogue will appear on the screen.

Much like the Alignment dialogue, you can click a button in the Distribute Shapes dialogue that corresponds to how you want to distribute the shapes.

Once you click a button to select it, click the OK button in the dialogue to implement your choice.

(Note: you must select 3 or more shapes to make the distribute option to be accessible on the Shape menu).

The following image shows the same four shapes as shown previously; but now they have been distributed vertically.

Snap and Glue

By default, shapes that are added to a drawing snap to gridlines and ruler subdivisions. When something snaps to an object, it means that it automatically aligns itself by attaching itself to the object.

For example, if you drag a rectangle into a drawing grid and position it very close to a grid line, it will easily snap (adhere) to that gridline. This snapping feature helps you draw diagrams by making it easier to align shapes to particular reference points (like grid lines).

If shapes did not snap to gridlines, you would have to very carefully position each shape in a diagram if you wanted them to align evenly.

Typically, the term “glue” is used to describe when a connector (or perhaps something else) attaches to some object in a drawing, so that it remains attached even if the object is moved.

(Note: a connector is a line that flows from one shape or object in a diagram to another).

To change the snap and glue settings in Visio, you can click the Tools menu, followed by the Snap and Glue option.

When you follow these options, a Snap and Glue dialogue will appear on your screen.

Under the General tab of the Snap and glue dialogue, you can click to place checkmarks next to the options that you want to implement. If you do not want an option to work, make sure that the checkbox is removed.

Under the Currently Active heading, you can clear the Snap checkbox to disable the Snap feature.

If the Snap feature is enabled (the Snap checkbox is checked) you can specify what objects will be Snapped by adding or removing checkmarks to or from the “Snap To” column of options. Similarly, you can change how objects are glued by adding or removing checkmarks to or from the “Glue To” column.

Under the advanced tab, you can adjust how strong the Snap effect is by using a series of slider switches.

Moving a slider switch to the right increases the pixel value and makes the snap effect stronger. As you can see from the preceding image, you can adjust the snap strength for Rulers, Grid lines, Guides, Points, Geometry, and Extensions.

Double Click Behaviors

In Visio, you can change how a given shape reacts when it is double clicked. To do this, select the shape in question, and then click the Format menu followed by the Behavior option.

When you follow this option, a Behavior dialogue will appear. When this dialogue appears, click the “Double‐Click” tab.

As you can see from the image above, the Double‐Click tab reveals a list of radio buttons that you can choose from to specify the shape’s behavior when it is double clicked.

Here you can specify that the Shape’s ShapeSheet be opened, that another page in the drawing is displayed, or any one of the other possibilities listed in the dialogue.

Remember though; the Radio buttons are mutually exclusive, and you can only have one double–click behavior for each shape in your drawing.

Once you select the behavior, click the OK button in the dialogue to implement it.

Lesson 3.3: More Shape Tasks

There are still a few more shape tasks to cover about before we move on to other Visio subjects.

In this lesson, you will learn how to connect shapes, configure a layout, and use the Re‐Layout feature. At the end of a lesson, you will learn how to add data to a shape.

Connecting Shapes

Organizational charts, flowcharts, network diagrams, and project management diagrams are only a few of many diagram types that use connections between shapes.

Typically, connections between shapes imply a logical flow across a diagram. Perhaps the logical flow indicates a sequence of steps in a process, or possibly a flow of data or information through a sequence of steps in a mathematical algorithm or a business hierarchy.

Whatever the case, the secret to creating successful diagrams often lies in your ability to make connections between shapes.

In Visio 2007, you can connect shapes easily by using the AutoConnect feature. To activate AutoConnect, click the AutoConnect button on the Standard toolbar.

When the AutoConnect feature is active, the AutoConnect button will be highlighted in Orange.

To connect shapes using AutoConnect, let your mouse pointer hover over a shape that you want to connect to another shape (assuming there are two or more shapes in the drawing).

Once you let your mouse pointer hover over a shape, you will see light blue arrows appear at the top, bottom, and sides of the shape.

The next step, is to let your mouse pointer hover over the blue arrow that points to (is closest to) the object that you want to connect to. When you do this, the blue arrow will darken, and a red box will appear around the shape object that will be on the other end of the connection.

In the example image above, you can see what happens when the mouse pointer hovers on the blue arrow at the bottom of the oval shape. The arrow darkens, and a red box appears around the neighboring shape (the diamond), indicating that it will be the end point for the connection.

If the implied connection is looks like what you want, just click on the blue arrow that you are hovering over. A connection line will then automatically be drawn between the shapes.

(The image below shows the same two shapes as in the example above, except that now they have been connected).

When AutoConnect is activated, you can easily connect to a new shape as well. To do this, first click on the new shape (in the Shapes pane) that you want to add to the diagram.

At this point, the shape you want to add should be highlighted in blue in the Shapes pane.

Next, let your mouse pointer hover over an existing shape in the diagram. When the blue connection arrows appear, choose the arrow that corresponds to the side of the existing shape that you want to connect to the new shape.

When you click on the connection arrow (blue arrow), the shape that is selected in the Shapes pane will appear on the diagram. Moreover, the newly added shape will be connected to the shape at the side corresponding to the blue connection arrow you clicked on.

You can also connect shapes by using the Connector tool on the Standard toolbar.

When you click the Connector button on the tool bar, your mouse pointer will show a bent arrow when it hovers over the drawing area. You can then use this tool to draw a connector between two shapes by dragging your mouse.

When you draw a connector in this way, you should try to attach (glue) the ends to the connection points (blue x’s) on the shapes.

You will also often see a dynamic connector shape in the shapes pane when you are using a Visio template.

You can drag this dynamic connector shape over to a drawing, to connect shapes. When you drag the dynamic connector into place between two shapes, you can then use your mouse to drag the ends of the connector to the appropriate connection points to connect the shapes.

You can change the endpoint of a connector by clicking it in the drawing to select it, and then clicking the Format menu followed by the Line option. When the Line dialogue appears, use the drop lists provided in the dialogue to specify how the connector ends should look.

You can get an idea of what the connector will look like by observing the Dialogue’s preview area.

To implement the new connector settings, click the Ok button in the dialogue.

Configuring a Layout

There are automatic Layout Settings available for use in Visio, if you feel they are appropriate for the type of drawing you are setting up.

To use these Layouts, click the Shape menu, and then click the Configure Layout option.

Following the Configure Layout option will cause a Configure Layout dialogue to appear on your screen.

In the Configure Layout dialogue, under the Placement tab, you can use the Style drop list to select a layout style for the shapes in your drawing.

You can also specify a Direction for the layout using the Direction drop list, and you can even specify a connector style and appearance by using the options under the Connectors heading.

As an example, the following image shows a rather disorganized flow chart diagram.

In the Configure Layout dialogue, you can set up options to change the Layout of the current drawing.

In the dialogue shown in the preceding page, the Flowchart style has been specified, along with a left to right direction and curved connectors. To implement these layout settings, you can click the OK button in the dialogue.

Here is the same example drawing as before, after applying the Configure Layout options as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Using the Re‐Layout Command

Let’s suppose you have created a drawing layout, and then you modify it by moving shapes or connectors with your mouse. If it turns out that you do not like the look of your Layout modifications, you can use the Re‐Layout command to rearrange the shapes into a (possibly) more organized or neat layout.

As an example, have a look at the following flowchart. It has been rearranged from its original layout by moving shapes with the mouse.

To re‐layout the shapes, click the Shape menu, followed by the Re‐Layout Shapes option.

Here is the result of this action.

The shapes have been reorganized into a tighter, neater looking arrangement that is closer to the original layout.

You can even select parts of the drawing with your mouse, and then use the re‐layout option to reorganize the selected parts (as shown in the following image).

Adding Data to Shapes

A Visio diagram can be more than just a fancy collection of shapes. You can also include and organize information in your Visio drawings by adding data to your diagram’s shapes.

To add data to shapes in your diagram, first select a shape that you would like to add data to. Once you are ready, right click on the selection and choose Data followed by Shape Data from the popup menu.

If no shape data exists, you will see a prompt asking you if you want to create some.

To continue, click the Yes button in response to this prompt.

If Shape Data does exist, (Some shapes have preset data fields) you will see a Shape Data dialogue like the following:

If the fields available in the Shape Data dialogue are adequate, just enter some values and click the Ok button.

If you would like to define additional fields, click the Define button.

Clicking the Yes button in the prompt box, or clicking the Define button in the Shape Data dialogue, will display the “Define Shape Data” dialogue box. When the dialogue appears, click the New button to add a new data field for the selected shape.

The next step is to enter a data field Label and specify a value type for the field.

In this example, the new field will be labeled “Supervisor” and its type will be string. If you want more data fields for the selected shape, click the New button near the bottom of the dialogue to add another field.

Once you are finished, click the OK button at the bottom of the dialogue. At this point, you will see the new fields that you added in the Shape Data dialogue.

Click the Ok button in the Shape data dialogue, and then click the View menu followed by the Shape Data window option.

At this point, you should see a small data window appear. The data window will only show the fields for the currently selected shape.

Now you can enter data into the fields in the data window. When you close the window with the close (x) button, the data you enter will be retained so it can be viewed later.

If you want, you could select multiple shapes at once, and then use the procedure described above to add data fields to all of the selected shapes. (Right click on the multiple shape selection, and choose Data followed by Shape Data from the popup menu.

Other Shape Operations

There are more Shape operations available in Visio that you can perform when shapes are overlapped in a drawing.

In the image above, there are two shapes that overlap a third shape. You can change the stacking order of these shapes (which shape is underneath which) by using the Order options under the shape menu.

To do this, you must first select a shape that you want to re‐order, and then click the Shape menu followed by the Order option.

Under the Order option, you will see a sub menu of options for changing the position of the selected shape.

The Bring to Front option will bring the selected shape to the top of the stack, while the Send to Back option will bring the shape to the bottom of the stack. If you click Bring Forward, or Send Backward, the selected shape will move up or down one position in the stack, respectively.

When two shapes overlap, you can create a shape based on the union or intersection of those two shapes. The union is a combination of two or more shape areas while the intersection is that area that two or more overlapping shapes share.

The following image shows two overlapping shapes.

Here is the union of the two shapes:

Here is the intersection of the two shapes:

To obtain the union or intersection of two or more shapes, select the given shapes and then click the Shape menu followed by the Operations option. This action will reveal a sub menu of operations that you can perform on the selected shapes.

As you can see, you can find the union, intersection, and more by using the options in this menu.

Lesson 3.4: Using Layers

Layers, which were first mentioned in Lesson 3.2, can be used to organize shapes into collections that can be treated on an individual (layer by layer) basis. Individual layers of shapes can be hidden, locked, colored, and more.

In Lesson 3.2, we discussed how to add shapes to a layer. In this lesson, we will learn how to add a layer to a drawing, show and hide layers, activate a layer, and preserve group member properties for shapes that are added to a layer as a group. Finally, to close the lesson, you will learn how to color a layer.

Adding a Layer

Any page in a Visio drawing can have multiple layers. To create a new layer, make sure the page that you want the layer to belong to is displayed as the current page. Once you are ready, click the View menu, followed by the Layer Properties option.

In the Layer Properties dialogue that appears, click the New button.

At this point, a small box will appear that prompts you for the name of the new layer. Type a name for the new layer and click the Ok button in the small name dialogue.

Once you have done this, you will see your new layer listed in the Layer Properties dialogue box.

Click the Ok button in the dialogue box to complete the process and remove the Layer Properties.

Showing and Hiding Layers

To show a layer, click the View menu followed by the Layer Properties option. When the Layer Properties dialogue appears, look in the list of layers for the layer that you want to show or hide.

Under the Visible column, clear the checkbox corresponding to the given layer if you want to hide it. If you want the layer to be visible, put a check in the checkbox. Once you are finished, click the Ok button in the dialogue.

Look at the following drawing page (with no layers hidden) as an example.

The rectangle at the top, and the diamond on the right, belong to a layer called MyNewLayer.

To make the layer hidden, you can click the View menu followed by the Layer Properties option.

When the Layer Properties dialogue appears, look for the checkbox in the Visible column that corresponds to the appropriate layer, and clear it.

When you click OK in the dialogue, the shapes belonging to the layer that you modified will be hidden on the drawing page.

Note: the rectangle and diamond shapes are now hidden.

Activating a Layer

To activate a layer, first use the Layer Properties option on the View menu to display the Layer Properties dialogue box.

In the Layer Properties dialogue box, put a checkmark in the checkbox under the Active column to make the given layer active.

In the example image shown above, the layer named myLayer has been made active.

When a layer is active, any shapes that you add to the drawing page will be automatically assigned to the layer. This option provides a quick and easy way to assign shapes to a layer as you build your drawing.

Note: You can have multiple active layers in a Visio drawing, and added shapes will be assigned to all active layers.

To see what layers a given shape is assigned to, select the shape, and then click the Format menu followed by the Layer option.

The resulting dialogue will show what layers the selected shape is assigned to.

Note: When working with Flowchart shapes, newly added shapes will be automatically assigned to the default flow‐chart layer.

Preserving Group Member Properties

As you know, you can assign shapes in a drawing to a group (Lesson 3.2). Shapes that have been grouped can be moved and selected as if they belong to one big shape.

The individual shapes in a group can be assigned to different layers (just like any other shapes in the drawing); and, the entire group can also be assigned to a layer as a unit.

Now, suppose you have two shapes that have been assigned to different layers in your drawing. What happens if you group these shapes and then assign the group to another different layer?

You can ensure that each individual shape in a group retains its individual layer assignments, even when the shapes are assigned to a different layer as a group, by using the Preserve Group Member Properties option.

To do this, select a group of shapes that you want to assign to a layer. Once the group is selected, click the Format menu followed by the Layer option.

In the dialogue box that appears, check the Preserve Group Member Layers checkbox, and then select the layer that you want to assign the group to.

When you click the OK button, the group will be assigned to the selected layer, and the individual layer assignments of the shapes in the group will be preserved.

Coloring (and Locking) Layers

If you have different layers in a drawing, you can color the layers independently of one another. All of the shapes on a given layer will assume the color of that layer.

To color a layer, first click the View menu followed by the Layer Properties option.

In the Layer Properties dialogue, put a checkmark in the “Color” checkbox corresponding to the layer that you want to color. Once you do this, a drop down color menu will become accessible.

To set a color for the layer, just choose a color from this drop down menu and then click the Ok button in the dialogue. (Please see the following image).

Once you click the Ok button in the dialogue, all of the shapes belonging to the layer will assume the color that you specified.

The layer properties dialogue also has checkboxes for locking a layer. You can lock or unlock a layer by marking or clearing the appropriate checkbox, just like the other layer properties.

When a layer is locked, its shapes cannot be edited, moved, or modified! Remember to click the OK button in the dialogue when you are finished setting up layer properties.

Lesson 3.5: Adding Objects

Up until now, the only items we have been adding to our drawings have been shapes, text, and connectors. Not surprisingly, that Visio 2007 lets you add many more objects than just the basic diagram shapes and text that we have been adding so far.

In this lesson, you will learn about Inserting comments, and inserting and formatting images. You will also learn how to create a chart in Visio, and how to display Mathematical equations.

Inserting a Comment

Visio 2007 makes it quite easy to insert comments in your drawings. To insert a comment, just select the shape that you want to comment on, and then click the Insert menu followed by the Comment option.

When you follow these steps, a yellow comment box will appear in the Visio screen next to the selected shape.

When the comment box appears, go ahead and type whatever comment you want to make into the box. You should notice that the comment is labeled at the top with your username and the current date.

When you are viewing a drawing with comments, you will see a small yellow square next to (or in) an object that has comments associated with it.

If you single click on the square, the comment will be displayed on the screen.

If you wish, you can use the methods described here to insert multiple comments for the same object.

Inserting an Image

In Visio, there are two basic ways that you can insert images and photos. You can either insert images from Clip Art, or insert images from other sources, that have been saved in a folder on your computer.

To insert images from clipart, click the Insert menu, and then choose the Picture option followed by the Clip Art option.

When you follow these options, the Clip Art task pane will appear on the right of your Visio screen. (An image of the Clip Art task pane is shown on the following page).

Near the top of the Clip Art pane, you will see a field labeled Search For. You can enter a name or term that specifies the type of Clip Art images you are looking for, and then click the Go button to search for any Clip Art that matches the search term.

As an example, suppose we are looking for Clip Art that matches the word “tree”. The first step is to enter this word into the Search For field.

Before you click the Go button to start the search, you can use the “Search In” drop list and the “Results should be” drop list to refine your search criteria.

In the Clip Art pane shown above, the search term is “tree”, and the search location is All Locations, which includes both online and offline Clip Art sources. Only Clip Art results will be returned from the search, as specified in the “Results Should Be In” drop list.

Once the Go button (next to the Search For field) is clicked, the following Clip Art results are returned.

You can use the scroll bar on the right of the pane to view all of the search results. Once you have found a piece of clipart that you like, just click on its thumbnail to insert it into the drawing.

Once the Clip Art is in the drawing, you can select it, move it, and resize it with your mouse.

You can even make connections from the Clip Art to other shapes in the drawing.

If you want to insert a digital image/photo (like a .gif or .jpeg) that is stored in a folder on your computer, just click the Insert menu and choose the Picture option followed by the From File option.

When you follow these options, an Insert picture dialogue (much like a standard Open dialogue) will appear on your screen.

In this dialogue, you can use the navigation controls on the left to browse to the particular folder on your computer that contains your pictures. Once you see the folder listed in the dialogue, double click it to list its contents.

Next, click on a thumbnail image to select the picture you want to insert, and then click the Open button in the lower right of the Insert Picture dialogue. When you click the Open button, the selected picture will be inserted into your drawing.

Once the picture is inserted into your drawing, you can select it, move it, and resize it with your mouse. You can also create connections from the picture to other shapes in the drawing.

Formatting a Picture

Visio 2007 is a very comprehensive drawing tool. If you insert a digital picture into your drawing, Visio will even provide a special dialogue that will allow you to Format the picture.

To format a digital photo in Visio, click on the photo to select it, and then click the Format menu followed by the Picture option.

When you follow these options, a Format Picture dialogue like the one on the following page will appear on your screen.

This Format Picture dialogue has several slider switch options for changing your photo. The following table briefly describes what these options do.

Brightness Lightens or Darkens the picture by adding or reducing the amount of white.

Contrast Changes the amount of difference between the lightest and darkest elements in the picture.

Gamma Lightens or Darkens the mid range tones in your picture.

AutoBalance This button automatically adjusts the options under the Balance heading (Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma).

Transparency Adjusts the level at which underlying objects or background can be seen through the picture.

Blur Reduces detail on sharp edges or areas.

Sharpen Increases sharpness on soft edges or areas.

Denoise Helps remove unwanted color speckles (image noise) in your picture.

When you adjust the slider switches, you can see how your picture is being modified in the dialogue’s preview area. Once you are finished formatting, click the OK button in the dialogue to implement your picture settings.

The following image shows the inserted picture after the brightness, blur, gamma, and transparency have been adjusted.

If you display the Compression tab in the Format Picture dialogue, you will see options for setting a “quality” level for the picture and for changing the picture resolution.

In general, if you decrease the image quality, you will also decrease the image file size. Keep in mind, once you decrease the quality and size of an image file, you cannot go back to the image’s original size and quality.

The Web/Screen resolution option will decrease the solution of your picture to a more manageable size for the Web.

The Print option will help obtain a manageable resolution for printing the picture.

Adding Charts

Until now, we have been dealing mostly with shape oriented diagrams, and we haven’t really touched on Visio’s options for creating charts. It should come as no surprise that Visio provides templates and stencils for laying out an extensive variety of charts and graphs.

Visio also provides a quick and efficient option for inserting a chart into a drawing by using the Insert menu. Here is how to do it.

To start, click the Insert menu followed by the Picture option. On the Picture sub menu, click the Chart option.

When you follow these options, you will see your Visio screen change in a way that you have not seen before. Instead of the standard toolbar and menu layout that you are used to, you will now see a new toolbar layout and a new “Chart” heading on the menu bar. These option changes are specifically intended for building charts.

In addition, a chart datasheet (that looks something like an Excel spreadsheet) will appear, along with a basic “bar‐graph” chart.

You can return to your original (standard) Visio screen by simply clicking on an empty part of the grid area. (The standard screen with the newly inserted chart is shown below).

If you double click on the newly inserted chart in the standard Visio screen, you will return to the special Visio chart screen.

In the Visio chart screen, you can modify the data that the chart is based on by changing the values in the chart’s data sheet.

To change data in the data sheet, just click in the cell that you want to edit and then change the data as you require. You can also edit the label cells (i.e. 1st Qtr, 2nd Qtr, East, West) in the same way, so the labels say what you want them to.

If you would like to add additional data to the chart, you can easily fill in more columns in the chart’s data sheet by dragging its borders to expand it, and then entering data in the cells (As shown below).

You can also change the type of chart used to display the data by clicking the Chart menu, and then clicking the Chart Type option.

When you click this option, a Chart Type dialogue will appear on the screen, as shown in the following image.

In this dialogue you can select a chart category from the chart type panel on the left. Once you select a chart type, a set of sub‐types belonging to that category will appear in the Chart Sub – Type area.

You can click on a thumbnail in the Chart sub‐Type area to select that chart, and then click the OK button at the bottom of the dialogue to implement your choice.

In the following image, the bar graph has been changed to a Pie chart.

Once you have prepared the data for your chart, and decided upon a chart type, you can modify several other chart properties.

For example, in the Visio chart screen, you can right click on the white area surrounding the chart and chose the Format Chart Area option.

This action will display a Format Chart Area dialogue that you can use to specify a color and a border for the area immediately surrounding the chart.

Once you have decided on a border and color for the chart area, click the OK button.

You can also click the Chart menu, and then click the Chart Options menu item.

When you follow this option, you will be presented with a chart options dialogue box.

You can use this dialogue to add a chart title, prepare data labels, and specify the location of the chart legend.

Once you have finished preparing your chart, you can return to the standard Visio screen by clicking on an empty area of the grid.

Once you have returned to the standard screen, you can go ahead and select, move, and resize your chart. You can even connect your chart to other shapes.

Note: If you are careful, you can even insert a chart inside of a shape.

Adding Equations

You can add an equation to your drawing by clicking the Insert menu, followed by the Picture option, followed by the Equation option.

When you follow this option, you will see an equation dialogue box appear on the screen.

You will also see an equation box appear on the grid area, and the toolbar/menu bar layout will change (much like how it changed when inserting a chart).

To set up your equation, click the button in the equation dialogue corresponding to the type of equation that you want. Each button will provide a drop list of thumbnails that you can use to further refine your equation type.

Once you decide on a particular equation type, click that thumbnail to start the equation in the equation box.

Once you have entered the equation, you can click on an empty area of the grid to return to the standard Visio screen.

In the Standard Visio screen, you can select, move, and resize the equation in the usual way.

If you want to, you can even add connections from your equation to other shapes.

If you are careful, you can even insert equations inside Shapes (it helps to expand the shape somewhat first, before inserting the equation).

Lesson 3.6: Adding Advanced Objects

Now that you know how to add Charts, Clip Art, Pictures, and Equations to your drawings; it is time to move on to adding some other types of advanced objects.

In this lesson, you will learn how to add Hyperlinks, CAD drawings, Controls, and other advanced objects.

Adding a Hyperlink

To add a basic Hyperlink to a Visio drawing, first display the page that you want to insert the Hyperlink into. If you want to associate the hyperlink with a particular shape on the page, select that shape.

Next, click the Insert menu, followed by the Hyperlinks option. In the following image, we are inserting a hyperlink into the oval shape that has been selected in the top of the grid area.

When you click the Hyperlinks option on the Insert menu, you will see a dialogue appear that looks like the following:

If you want to create a hyperlink to a file on your computer or to an Internet Website, enter the path to the file, or the address of the Website in the Address field provided. If you are linking to a file on your local system, you can use the Browse button next to this field.

If you want to link to another shape in the same drawing, leave the Address field blank, and click the Browse button next to the Sub Address field.

This action will display a smaller hyperlink dialogue, where you can specify the page number, and the shape name to link to.

You can find the shape name in the Shapes pane, underneath the given shapes icon.

In the following example dialogue, we are linking to a Decision (diamond) shape on page2 of the drawing.

Because a Zoom level of 150 has been specified in the Zoom field, the target shape will be shown at 150% zoom when the link is followed.

Once the link information is specified, click the Ok button.

If you want, you can now enter a description for the link in the original (larger) Hyperlink dialogue.

Once you are ready, click the OK button to create the link.

To follow the link in Visio, right click on the shape, and then click the Hyperlink option.

Note: If you save the drawing as a Web page, you could just click on the shape or page, and then click the hyperlink.

You can also add hyperlinks by dragging a Hyperlink navigation shape over to your drawing. These shapes are available in the Borders and Titles stencil.

When you drag the navigation shape over to your drawing, the Hyperlink dialogue will appear as before.

Specify a location and a Description for the Link as before, and then click the OK button when you are finished. As before, you can link these navigation shapes to external Websites, local files, or shapes and pages in the same drawing.

Inserting an External Object

In Visio 2007, you can insert objects that are associated with other programs. When you insert an object of this type, you have two choices. You can insert an object based on an existing file on your computer, or you can insert and create the object from within Visio.

The important thing is that when you insert an external object into Visio, you can create or edit the object using the tools of the particular program that the object is associated with. As an example, we will insert a Microsoft word document object into a Visio drawing.

First, we open Visio and display the page that we want to insert the object into. Once we are ready, it is just a matter of clicking the Insert menu, followed by the Object option.

When you click the Object option, an insert Object dialogue will appear on your screen.

In the list of object types, select the particular type that you want to insert into your drawing. In this case, it is a Microsoft Word document.

Near the bottom of the dialogue, you will see two radio buttons. If you select the Create New button, you will be able to create the object from within Visio. If you choose the Create New option, you can also display the object as an icon (if you wish), by putting a checkmark in the Display as Icon checkbox.

When we the Ok button is clicked, a Microsoft word window will open up, allowing you to create your Word document directly.

Once you have finished creating your document, click the close (X) button in the Microsoft Word window to close it.

When the window closes, you will see an icon representing your object in the Visio drawing.

You can select, move, and resize this icon much like a standard Visio shape. Unlike an ordinary shape, if double click on the icon, (or right click and choose Document Object | Open) it will open up in a Microsoft Word window for editing.

The other way to insert objects from other programs is to insert an object based on an existing file on your system. You can specify this option by selecting the Create from File radio button in the Insert Object dialogue.

When you choose the Create from file option, you will see a browse button that will allow you to navigate to the location of the file you want. You will also notice a Link to file checkbox. If you check this box, changes caused by editing the inserted object in Visio, will be implemented in the actual underlying file. Moreover, changes to the underlying file will be seen when you view the inserted object in Visio.

If you leave the Link to file checkbox blank, the underlying file will not be linked to the Visio object.

Once you are ready, click the Ok button to insert the object into your Visio drawing.

Once the object has been inserted, you can select it, move it, and resize it much like a regular shape. In the case of a Word document, if you double click on it, it will open up for editing within Visio.

Inserting a CAD Drawing

A CAD drawing is a Computer Aided Design drawing typically created in a special software program called AutoCad. CAD drawings can be very large and complex files that contain architectural plans, engineering schematics, three dimensional graphics, and more. To insert a CAD drawing into your Visio file, first display the page that you want to insert the CAD object into, and then click the Insert menu followed by the Cad Drawing option.

When you follow these options, a dialogue will open up allowing you to navigate to the location of the CAD drawing on your system. (For CAD drawings, you will be looking for DWG or DXF file extensions).

When you find the CAD drawing that you want to insert, click on it in the dialogue to select it, and then click the Open button.

At this point, the CAD drawing should appear in the Visio page and the Cad Drawing Properties dialogue should open.

At this point, you may want to drag the dialogue box out of the way so you can see how the CAD drawing looks in your page.

If you are happy with the size of the drawing, click the Cancel button on the CAD Properties dialogue to close it.

If you would like to change the scale of the CAD drawing, click the Custom Scale radio button in the CAD Properties dialogue.

When you choose the custom scale option, you can specify your own choice for the scale of the CAD drawing. If you look in the Preview aria of the dialogue, you will get an idea of the relative sizes of the Cad drawing to the Visio page.

Once you have decided on a scale for the CAD object, click the OK button to continue. At this point, you should see the CAD drawing in your page in the scale that you specified.

You can add shapes to your Visio page and connect the shapes to the CAD drawing if you wish.

If you want to display the CAD Drawing Properties dialogue again, right click on the drawing and choose Cad Drawing Object, followed by the Properties option, from the popup menu.

Inserting a Control

With Visio 2007, you can insert Active X controls, which are programmable components that can add functionality to your Visio drawings.

To insert a control, open your Visio drawing to the appropriate page, and then click the Insert menu, followed by the Control option.

At this point, the Control dialogue will appear. In the Control dialogue, you can select the specific control that you want to add to your drawing from the list provided.

(In the image above, a Forms Command Button control has been selected)

Once you have chosen a control, click the OK button in the dialogue box to add it to your Visio drawing.

When you add a control to a drawing, you can select it, resize it, and move it much like a typical shape. You should also notice a Developer toolbar appear on your screen.

(The Developer toolbar’s design mode button is shown in a red square in the image above)

To select and resize your control, or modify or edit its properties, make sure that the Design Mode button is active in the Developer toolbar (If it is active, it should be highlighted in orange).

If you click the Design Mode button, to deactivate design mode, the control will not be editable. Instead, it will assume its functional purpose.

For example, in the image on the previous page, the inserted control was selected (Visio was in design mode), and therefore, the control could be resized, moved, and so on.

If you click the Design Mode button on the Developer toolbar, so that the button is not highlighted, you will no longer be in design mode.

Now, the control cannot be selected.

Instead, the inserted control (a command button) now acts like a button when clicked.

If you insert controls into a Visio diagram, you will most likely be adding some kind of programming to take advantage of the control’s functionality.

In the case of a button control like the one shown above, you can add VBA code that enables the button to do something when clicked.

To add code for the control, first make sure that Visio is in Design Mode (check the design mode button on the developer toolbar). Next, right click on the control, and follow the control’s name, followed by the View Code button on the popup menu.

When you click the View code option, the Microsoft Visual Basic editor will open to display a VBS editing window for the control.

In the code editing window, you can enter VBA code between the Private Sub and End sub statements. The code that you enter here will be executed when the button (the inserted control) is clicked.

An easy way to add code to a control is to record a macro; and then copy and paste the macro’s code between the Sub statements in the inserted Control’s code window.

The buttons for recording and playing macros in are available in Visio on the Developer toolbar.

If this sounds confusing to you, try to go over the practice exercise for this lesson. In the exercise, you will attempt to record and copy macro code for use in with an inserted control.

Finally, you can edit the properties of a control by right clicking on the control (in design mode), and then following the control’s name followed by the Control Properties option on the popup menu.

When you follow these options, a control properties window will appear, allowing you to modify a wide array of attributes for the given control.

To edit a control property, just click in the field (rightmost column) corresponding to the property you want to change, and then enter the values that you want.

In the control Properties window shown on the previous page, the caption for the control has been edited to read MyButton. As you can see in the Visio drawing shown below, the caption has been automatically implemented in the inserted button control.

Note: the properties available for modification can change depending on the particular type of control that you are using.

Section 3: Review Questions

1. You can access shape stencils in Visio by using the… A. Shapes pane B. Shapes button on the standard toolbar C. Shapes option on the File menu D. All of the above

2. In Visio, a Layer can be thought of as a…. A. Set or collection of shapes in a drawing that can be modified as one. B. A type of shape in a three dimensional chart C. A user interface component D. None of the above

3. If you flip a shape horizontally, you are flipping it around the… A. Vertical axis B. Horizontal axis C. Diagonal axis D. None of the above

4. If you flip a shape vertically you are flipping it around the… A. Vertical axis B. Horizontal axis C. Diagonal axis D. Rotational axis

5. In Visio, snap means… A. An object automatically attaches itself to a guideline or gridline (when close enough) so that alignment is easier B. An object automatically connects to a shape C. An object is zoomed in automatically D. None of the above

6. To activate or deactivate AutoConnect you can… A. Click the AutoConnect button on the standard toolbar B. Click the AutoConnect option on the Data menu C. Use the AutoConnect window D. Any of the above

7. You can also connect shapes by using… A. A dynamic connector B. Dragging the shapes close together C. Selecting both shapes that you want to connect D. Using the Ctrl + C shortcut

8. Which of the following is not an option that you can access in the Layer properties? A. color B. transparency C. Rotation D. Visibility

9. When you are formatting a picture in Visio, contrast means… A. The amount of red hues in the picture B. The sharpness of the hard edges in the picture C. The amount of difference between the lightest and the darkest parts of a picture D. None of the above

10. When you add a hyperlink to a shape in Visio, you can make the link target a… A. Page in the same drawing B. External Web page C. A shape in the same drawing D. Any of the above

Section 4: Working With Visio Files

In this section you will learn how to: Create, open and use template files Create a new stencil Add/remove shapes to/from a stencil Copy shapes from one stencil to another Save a file Change the file extension Use AutoRecover Access file properties Remove hidden information in a file E‐mail a drawing Save drawing as PDF or XPS

Lesson 4.1: Using Templates

In Visio, there are 3 major file types that you will end up dealing with most of the time. These are: Visio drawing files (VSD extension), Visio templates (VST extension), and Visio Stencils (VSS extension).

In this lesson, we will be concentrating on the Visio template (VST) files. We will review how to open Visio templates, and how to use Visio templates. We will also learn how to create Visio templates, and how to save them.

Opening Templates

We first dealt with opening Visio templates in lesson 1.4 of this manual. As you may remember, a Visio template typically contains stencils, which in turn may contain shapes, backgrounds, and other drawing objects.

In addition, a template can also contain pages settings (like the drawing scale for a page) as well as color themes, theme effects, and page styles. Essentially, a good template should provide all of the tools necessary to create a given type or category of drawing.

Visio provides a number of ways to open templates. The simplest way, as mentioned in lesson 1.4, is to use the Getting Started window. When you first open Visio 2007, the getting Started window will appear by default. On the left side of this window, you will see a list of list of template categories (1) and in the middle panel, a collection of recently used templates (2).

To open a recently used template, just click on its thumbnail in the middle panel. To open a template from one of the template categories, click on the appropriate category to display the associated templates as thumbnails in the middle pane.

To open one of these pre‐set templates, just double click the thumbnail for the template you want, or select the thumbnail (single click to highlight it) and then click the create button on the right.

You can also open a template by navigating through the files and folders on your computer until you get to the folder that contains the template in question. When you open the folder containing the template, just double click on the template’s icon t open it up in Visio.

Remember, a template file will have a VST extension.

You can also open a template in Visio by using the File menu. To do this, just click the file menu and look for a VST file extension in the recently used file list at the bottom of the menu.

Just click on the template name in the recently used file list top open it in Visio.

If the template that you want is not in the list at the bottom of the file menu, you can always click the Open option on the file menu (Ctrl + O shortcut). When you do this, an open dialogue will appear on your screen.

You can then use the navigation tools on the left side of the Open dialogue to browse to the folder that contains your template.

When you see your template listed in the folder contents, just double click on the template icon to open the template in Visio (or click to select the template, and then click the open button in the dialogue).

Remember, when you are opening a Visio template, you are looking for files with the VST extension.

Using a Template

A Visio template should contain all of the tools that you need to build a particular type of drawing. These tools can be shape stencils, page settings, themes, backgrounds, and more. When you open a template in Visio, the stencils included with the template will be found in the shapes pane in the left.

Just click on a stencil in the shapes pane to access the stencil’s shapes. Once the stencil’s shapes appear in the shapes pane, you can build a drawing from them in the usual way.

Backgrounds can be available in the shapes pane (as stencil contents), or backgrounds can be applied to a drawing page that was saved with the template (as shown in the following image).

If a color or effects them has been applied to the drawing page, and saved with the template, the theme will be preserved when the template is opened.

In the image shown above, a background was added to the drawing and a color theme was applied. Both of these elements are preserved when the file is saved as a template and re ‐ opened.

Page settings that you specify for your drawings will also be preserved in a template. To view or change these page settings when you are using a template, click the File menu followed by the Page Setup option.

When you follow these options, a page setup dialogue appears. You can use this page set up dialogue to specify a variety of page settings for your drawings. If these settings are saved with a template, they will be preserved and implemented when the template is opened.

The image above shows the drawing scale (in the Page Setup dialogue) specified for a given template. (For more information on how to set up your pages, review lesson 2.6 in this manual).

Creating a Template

It is a fairly simple matter to create your own custom template in Visio. If you want to base your custom template on an existing template, open the existing template first. If you want to create your own custom template from scratch, don’t open any templates, but rather, click the New Drawing button on the Standard toolbar to start with a blank drawing page and empty shapes pane.

The following image shows a blank drawing page in Visio.

At this point, you can add shape stencils to your drawing environment by opening them from the standard toolbar Shapes button.

When you click this button, a series of menus will appear that allow you to select the shape stencils of your choice.

In the image above, the charting shapes stencil is being opened. Once opened, stencils will appear in a list in the Shapes pane on the left. In the following image, two stencils have been opened, and subsequently added to the Shapes pane.

If you click the shapes button and follow the Visio extras option, you will see a wide variety of background and symbol stencils that you can open and add to the shapes pane.

Remember, you can also open the Page Setup dialogue, (click the File menu followed by the Page Setup option), to specify default page settings for any drawings that are created using your custom template.

Furthermore, if you click the Theme button on the formatting toolbar, the Theme‐colors task pane will appear.

Here, you can select a theme to apply it to any existing shapes in your drawing. If the Apply Theme to New Shapes checkbox is checked, new shapes that are added to your drawings will implement the chosen theme.

Once you have accumulated the stencils you want, set the page settings as you require, and set up any other themes or styles you want; it is time to save your custom template.

To do this, just click the File menu followed by the Save as option.

When you follow this option, a Save As dialogue will appear on your screen. You can use this dialogue to navigate to the folder that you want to save your template in.

Once you have found a good location for your template, enter a name into the File Name field, display the Save as type drop list at the bottom of the dialogue, and then choose the Template option.

Once you have entered a name for your template, and specified the file type as Template, click the Save button to save your new custom template.

Note: If you are saving a template that contains a new custom stencil (that did not exist before) you must save the stencil as well as the template. If you do not explicitly save the stencil, it will not appear when you open the template.

Lesson 4.2: Using Stencils

Stencils are collections of specific shapes that are typically used to create a particular drawing type. Visio stencil files use the VSS file extension.

In this lesson you will learn how to add shapes to a stencil, copy shapes from one stencil to another, remove shapes from stencils, create new stencils, and save stencils.

Creating a New Stencil

As you probably already know, a Visio stencil is a collection of shapes that can be used to create drawings. In Visio 2007, you can create your own stencils and add shapes to them to meet your own particular needs.

To create a new stencil, click the File menu followed by the Shapes option followed by the New Stencil option. (You can choose to create a new stencil in US units or Metric).

Once you follow the New Stencil option, you will see an icon for the stencil in the Shapes pane at the left of the Visio screen.

Adding Shapes to Stencils

If you have a drawing currently open in Visio you can add shapes from the drawing to your stencil simply by dragging them with your mouse, (from the drawing over to the open stencil).

When adding a shape to a stencil, you may notice that its default name is master (followed by some number). This is because the shape that has been added to the stencil is a master shape.

When you drag a shape from the stencil to create a drawing, the master shape stays in the stencil, and only a copy (called an instance) of the master shape appears in the drawing. This is how shapes in a stencil can be reused multiple times in many different drawings.

Copying Shapes from one Stencil to Another

If you have more than one stencil open, you can easily copy shapes from one stencil to another. To do this just open the stencil that you want to copy from, and select the particular shapes that you want to copy. (You can select multiple shapes in a template by using your mouse to draw a rectangle around the shapes that you want to select).

Once the shapes have been selected, right click on the selection and then choose the Copy option from the popup menu.

Performing this option will copy the selected shapes to the clipboard. Next, open the stencil that you want to add the shapes to, right click on it, and choose paste from the popup menu.

When you perform this action, the selected shapes from the other stencil will be pasted into the currently open stencil (as shown in the following image).

(Note: The Preset stencils that are packaged with Visio are locked against editing. You cannot paste or remove shapes in theses stencils. However, there is nothing stopping you from copying shapes from these non editable stencils. Typically users add shapes from existing stencils or drawings, to newly created stencils).

The image above shows a selection of shapes pasted in a new stencil, after they have been copied from an existing Flowchart stencil.

Removing Shapes from Stencils

To remove a Shape from an editable stencil, right click on the shape in question and choose the Delete Master option from the popup menu.

When you click this option, the shape in question will be removed.

Alternatively, you can click on a shape to select it, and then press the Delete key on your keyboard to remove the shape from the stencil. Remember, you cannot remove shapes from a stencil that is not editable.

Saving Stencils

Let’s suppose that you have created your own custom stencil, and now are ready to save it. To save a newly created stencil, click the small save button on the right side of the stencil’s title bar.

If this is the first time you have saved this stencil, a Save As dialogue will appear on your screen.

In the Save As dialogue you can browse to the folder that you want to store the stencil in. By default, custom stencils are stored in the My Shapes folder.

You can specify a name for your stencil in the File Name field of the dialogue, and then just click the Save button to save your stencil. Stencils should be saved with a VSS file extension.

If you have already saved your stencil, clicking the small save button on the stencil’s title bar will save any changes you have made to the stencil since it was last opened. The name and save location of the stencil will not be changed.

If you right click on the title bar of a custom stencil, you will see save options on the popup menu.

You can use the Save As option to display a Save As dialogue for the Stencil, and you can use the Save option to save the changes to an existing (already saved) stencil file.

You can also copy an existing stencil using the Save As dialogue. To do this, right click on the title bar of the existing stencil that you want to copy (the stencil does not have to be editable).

Next, click the Save As option on the popup menu.

When the Save As dialogue appears, specify a new name for the copy, use the navigation controls in the dialogue to navigate to the folder of your choice, and then click the Save button to save a copy of the stencil.

Lesson 4.3: Saving Visio Files

At this point in the manual, we will revisit the concept of saving Visio files. In this lesson, we will go over the process of saving a file for the first time, and continue with how to resave Visio files after they have been saved once.

You will also learn how to specify a different Visio file format when you save a file, and you will learn how to save your Visio drawing as a Web page.

Saving a File for the First Time

In Visio, when you save a file for the first time, you can use pretty much use any of the save commands. When saving for the first time, the save command you use will typically display some kind of save as dialogue on your screen.

For example, if you are saving a Visio drawing for the first time and you use the Ctrl + S shortcut, or the F12 shortcut, a Save As dialogue will appear on your screen.

You can use the navigation controls on the left of the dialogue to find an appropriate folder in which to save your file. You can also specify a name for the file in the File Name field provided in the dialogue.

If you click the File menu followed by the Save As option, or if you click the File menu followed by the Save option, a Save As dialogue will appear, provided that the file is being saved for the first time.

Finally, if you are saving your file for the first time, and you click the Save button on the standard toolbar, a Save As dialogue will appear.

Even if you are saving a Stencil, (see the previous lesson), either of the save options on the popup menu for the stencil will display a Save as dialogue (assuming that you are saving the stencil for the first time).

The save as dialogue offers you a lot of control over how your file is saved. You can use the Save As dialogue to and specify a name for the file save it in the location of your choice. Sometimes, you can even change the file extension for the saved file.

Because the Save As dialogue provides the most control over the file saving process, it is used as the default tool when saving files for the first time.

Saving a File for the Second Time

When you are working on a file that has already been saved, the Save As dialogue will not appear as the result of just any save command. If the File has already been saved, you must explicitly use one of the Save As commands (File menu followed by the save As option, or the F12 keyboard shortcut) to display the Save As dialogue.

If you click the File menu followed by the Save option, or use the Ctrl + S shortcut, or if you click the Save button on the standard toolbar, the Save As dialogue will not appear. Instead, the file will be saved to the same location and under the same name as specified when the file was originally saved.

In other words, the changes that you made to the file since you opened it will be saved, but the name of the file, the type of file, and the location that you saved it in will remain the same.

Changing File Extensions

Sometimes it may be necessary to change the file extension of the file you are saving. To do this, you should use the save as dialogue.

For example, let’s suppose that you are working on a drawing, and you want to save everything that you are working with (page settings, the stencils, and so on) as a template.

When you click the File menu followed by the Save As option, a Save As dialogue will appear as expected.

However, the default format for the file being saved will be a Visio drawing file (VSD extension).

At this point, you can use the Save As Type drop list in the dialogue to change the file type (extension) to a Visio template (VST) format, to a Visio Stencil format (VSS), or to another file format.

Now, instead of being saved as a Visio drawing, the file will be saved as a Visio template.

There are a number of different file formats that you can save your Visio files under. The VDX extension, for example, will save a Visio drawing with an XML format. The file will behave like an ordinary drawing when opened in Visio 2007, but because it is an XML specification, it can be modified with other applications.

You can also save XML Visio templates (VTX extension), as well as XML based Visio stencils (files with a VSX extension). Like VDX files, these file types will behave like typical templates or stencils when opened in Visio 2007.

If you like to work with AutoCad, you can save Visio files in an AutoCad drawing format (using a DWG extension). If you would like to save your drawing as an image, you can choose from among a variety of image formats, including JPEG, GIF and PNG.

Saving a File as a Web Page

You can save your Visio file as a Web page by clicking the File menu, and then following the Save As a Web Page option.

When you use this option, a save as dialogue will appear allowing you to specify a location and a name for the file.

By default, the file format will be specified as a Web page, (HTM, HTML) in the save as dialogue.

If you click the Save button, the drawing will be saved as a Web page in the location that you specify. If you upload the Web page files to a Web server, users can view your drawing over the internet.

If you click the Publish button, you will see a Save as Web Page dialogue appear on your screen. The dialogue has several options that you can specify for the Web page files you are about to save.

These options include how many and which pages in the drawing to publish, what type of navigation controls to include, what type of image output format should be used, and more.

Once you are finished specifying your publishing options, click the OK button to continue. The Web page files will be saved in the location that you specified in the Save as dialogue.

The following image shows a Visio drawing displayed as a Web page in an Internet Explorer Web browser. The drawing consists of two pages, with each drawing page being accessible in the browser by a hyperlink.

If you look at the folder where the Web page files are stored, you can see that an HTM Web page and a folder of supporting files have been created.

If you wanted to make these Web page files available on the internet, you should upload all related files (the HTM page and the folder of supporting files) to a Web server.

Lesson 4.4: Advanced File Tasks

Now that you have a solid understanding of how to open and save files in Visio, it is time to cover some more File related tasks.

In this lesson, you will learn about Visio’s AutoRecover feature and how to set up an auto recover period. You will also learn how to access Visio file properties, and how to publish files in PDF and XPS format.

Using AutoRecover

Sometimes a computer application can fail or close down before you have had a chance to save your work. This can be due to a loss of power, or to a system failure (crash) of some kind. With the AutoRecover feature, you can ensure that your work (or at least part of it) will be recoverable if an unplanned shutdown occurs.

To access the AutoRecover settings, click the Tools menu followed by the Options menu item.

In the Options dialogue that appears, select the Save/Open tab. Under this tab, you will see a Save Options heading with an AutoRecover checkbox underneath it.

If you place a checkmark in the AutoRecover checkbox, you will be able to specify a period between AutoRecover saves using the field provided. The lower the number of minutes in the AutoRecover (minutes) field, the more AutoRecover saves will be made in a given period of time.

For example, if you specify a value of 10 minutes, AutoRecover information would be saved six times in an hour (once every 10 minutes). This means that if a crash or shutdown happens, you will have a good chance of recovering most of our work (the most you should lose is the work that was done in the last 10 minutes).

If you decrease the AutoRecover period to an even lower number, the chances of being able to recover all of your work increases (Auto Recover information is saved more frequently).

Remember, to enable AutoRecover, click the Save AutoRecover Info Every (value) minutes checkbox. Once you have placed a check in the box, specify a number of minutes between the

AutoRecover saves by specifying a value in the field provided. Once you are finished, click the OK button.

Accessing File Properties

To access the Properties of a Visio file from within Visio, click the File menu followed by the Properties option (with the file in question open in Visio).

When you follow these options, the File Properties dialogue box will open up on your screen (as shown in the following image).

Under the General tab of the Properties dialogue, you can see the Type of file that is currently open. You can also see the file’s location (folder path on the compute), and the File size in bytes. The last piece of information lets you know what template the File has been based on. In the image above, the file has been based on the Basic Flowchart (US units) template.

If you click the Summary tab, you will see several editable areas where you can enter a variety of data about the file.

This data (sometimes referred to as metadata) can be used to help organize, identify, and find the file on a computer system.

In the Summary tab, you can enter a descriptive title for the file, a subject for it, An Author‘s name (your username on the computer by default), and a Manager (the person who oversees the department, program, or project that the file belongs to).

You can also specify the company that the file is created for, and the language that the file is created in.

Further down, you can use the Category field to specify what type of drawing the file belongs to, and you can use the Keyword field to add special identifying words that point out important aspects of the file.

There is also an area for adding a general description of the file, and check boxes for specifying if a preview and/or a workspace will be saved with the file. By default, the Save Preview and Save Workspace checkboxes are selected. The save preview option makes it possible to see a preview of the file when you use the preview option in the Open dialogue.

The Save Workspace option saves all your stencil and screen/window layout settings with your file so that your working environment will be the same when the file is reopened for further editing.

Finally, under the Contents tab, you will see a list of the pages, and Master shapes used in the file.

Remember, if you modify any of the properties displayed in the properties dialogue; click the OK button to implement the changes.

Removing Hidden Information

As you have just seen, you can include quite a bit of information with a file above and beyond the actual shapes and stencils used in the drawing. Sometimes, a situation may arise where you may want to remove some of the more personal information included in a file itself or in the file’s properties.

If you want to remove personal or potentially sensitive information from a file, click the File menu followed by the Remove Hidden information option.

When you follow these options, a Remove Hidden Information dialogue will appear on your screen (as shown in the following page).

Under the dialogue’s Personal Information tab, you can click to place checks in the boxes corresponding to the information that you want to remove. As you can see, you can remove identifying names from the file (like the author, manager, and company names), as well as comments stored in the drawing, file paths, and more.

If the file contains sensitive data from an external data source, you can select the bottom checkbox (Remove data from external sources stored in the document), to clear this sensitive data from the file.

Under the File Size Reduction tab, you can click checkboxes to specify the elimination of what may be unneeded information.

You can use the checkboxes provided to remove any or all of the following:

The Preview picture

Unused Master shapes

Unused Themes and Styles

Since this information is not crucial to the file (the information is either superfluous or unused in the file) it will not negatively impact the file or how you work with the file in Visio.

The image above shows the File Size Reduction tab options. Remember to click the OK button in the Remove hidden Information dialogue when you have finished specifying the information to be removed.

E‐Mailing a Drawing

Visio 2007 supports a feature that allows you to easily send a drawing as a Microsoft Outlook email attachment. Moreover, you can send your drawing as an email from within the Visio program itself.

Note: You should have the Microsoft Outlook email program installed on your computer, and at least one Outlook profile specified so that you can use these Visio e‐mail options.

To E‐mail a Visio drawing as an attachment, first click the file menu followed by the Send To option.

On the Send To sub menu, you will see three options.

With the first option you can send the drawing to a single Mail recipient.

With the second option, you can send the drawing with a routing Recipient list.

Finally, if you have access to a Microsoft exchange server (a type of Microsoft e‐mail, Task, and calendar server) you can send the drawing to an exchange folder.

If you click the Mail Recipient option, an Outlook e‐mail window will automatically open on your screen (provided you are using Outlook as your e‐mail program).

At this point, you can enter the recipients email address, type a message to the recipient, and then send the mail. The drawing will have been attached automatically to the email and will go out with the mail when you send it.

If you choose the Routing Recipient option from the Send To sub menu (File |Send To | Routing Recipient), you will see a Routing Slip dialogue like the following appear on your screen.

In the Routing slip dialogue, you can click the Address button to add email addresses to your routing list. (When you click this button, another dialogue will appear allowing you to select contacts from your contacts list).

Once all of the recipients that you want are listed in the routing slip, you can select a recipient and then click the Move buttons to move that recipient up or down in the list.

If the drawing is sent to the recipients one after another (this default setting is specified by the “One after Another” radio button at the bottom), the recipients will receive the drawing according to the order that is specified in the routing list.

When the drawing is sent, it will be received by the first person in the routing list. This person will then view and perhaps modify the drawing and then send it on to the next person in the routing list. In this way, each person in the routing list has a chance to view and modify the drawing (in the sequence specified in the routing list). When a person closes the drawing, they will be prompted to send the drawing on to the next person in the list.

If you put a checkmark in the Track Status checkbox, you will receive notice each time a person in the routing list passes the drawing on to the next.

You can also type the e‐mail text that will accompany the drawing into the Message Text area of the routing list dialogue. Once everything is ready, click the Add Slip button in the upper right to add the routing slip to the outgoing drawing file.

Once you have done all this, click the File menu, followed by the Send To option. This time, the options on the Send To sub menu will be different.

At this point, you can click the Next Routing Recipient option to send the drawing to the first contact in the routing list.

Saving as PDF or XPS

With a standard installation of Visio, you cannot save your Visio drawings as PDF files. However, you can add this functionality by downloading and installing an add‐in from Microsoft.

To do this, click the File menu, and then click the Find Add‐ins for other File Formats option.

When you follow this option, a help window will appear with information on saving Visio files under other formats.

In the Help window, click the “Install and Use the Save as PDF or XPS Add‐In from Microsoft” link provided. (Note: you must have an internet connection to obtain this add‐in).

When you click this link, you will be taken to another help page with a link that says “Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add‐in for 2007 Microsoft Office programs”.

When you click this link you will be taken to a Microsoft Web page where you can download the add‐in.

When the Microsoft Web page loads into your browser, download and install the Add‐in. (Note: to download and install the Add‐in, your version of Microsoft windows must be genuine).

Once you have installed the Add‐in, you can open a drawing in Visio, and then publish it as PDF or XPS by clicking the Visio file menu, followed by the Publish as PDF or XPS option.

This action will display a Save as PDF or XPS dialogue box that will look something like the following:

Here you can enter a name for the file in the name field, and then specify a file type PDF or XPS, by using the Save As type drop list. You can use the navigation controls provided (under the browse folders button in Vista) to navigate to the location of your choice.

Once you are ready, just click the Publish button o save the XPS or PDF file.

You should also notice a button labeled “Options” in the Publish as PDF or XPS dialogue. If you click this button, you will be able to specify finer control over how your Visio file is published.

For example, if you click the Options button, you will be able to specify a page range to publish if your drawing involves multiple pages. You can also choose to publish only the current view (the view that is shown in the drawing window).

You can also choose to publish a selected area of the drawing, and to include or exclude any background used in the drawing.

Section 4: Review Questions

1. Which one of the following is correct? A. A template contains stencils that contain shapes B. A shape is a kind of stencil C. Stencils contain templates that contain shapes D. You must use Visio’s preset templates for your drawings

2. The VST file extension signifies a… A. Stencil file B. Template file C. XML file D. Drawing file

3. The VSD file extension signifies a… A. Stencil file B. Template file C. XML file D. Drawing File

4. The VSS file extension signifies a… A. Stencil file B. Template file C. XML file D. Drawing file

5. The VSX extension signifies a… A. Stencil file B. Template file C. XML file D. Drawing file

6. To publish a Visio 2007 file as PDF you will need a… A. Printer B. Web server C. Publish as PDF add‐in program D. None of the above

7. When you send a Visio drawing to routing recipients you are… A. Emailing it to an exchange server B. Sending it to a database C. Emailing it to a user on a list who will then email it to the next recipient on the list and so on D. None of the above

8. When you remove hidden information from a Visio file you are… A. Removing potentially sensitive or personal information B. Removing non‐visible layers C. Removing shapes that are hidden beneath other shapes D. None of the above

9. If you have already saved the file you are working on, you can save your recent changes by… A. Clicking the save button on the standard toolbar B. Clicking the file menu followed by the save option C. A and B D. None of the above

10. A Master Shape is… A. A shape that appears in a drawing B. A shape that you draw with the pencil tool C. A shape that can be dragged from a stencil to a drawing, with the original shape remaining in the stencil for further use. D. None of the above.

Section 5: Viewing and Printing your Drawings

In this section you will learn how to: Use minimize, maximize, and restore Use the zoom feature Use guides Use the dynamic grid Show or hide rulers, grids, guides, and connection points Create a new window Cascade or tile several open files Use the ShapeSheet Use the Pan and Zoom window Use the Shape Data window Use the Size and Position window Use the Drawing Explorer window Use the External Data window and External Data features

Lesson 5.1: Managing your Drawings

In this lesson, you will learn a few more techniques for managing and laying out your drawings. You will learn about the drawing window control buttons, and you will learn how to use the Visio zoom control.

To close the lesson, you will learn how to use guidelines, the dynamic grid, and how to show or hide gridlines, guidelines, rulers, and connection points.

Using Minimize, Maximize, and Restore

In Visio, you can control a drawing window by using the window control buttons in the upper right of the drawing area.

If you click the minimize button ( ) the drawing window will collapse down into the lower part of the Visio screen, as shown in the following image.

As you can see, the Visio drawing window contained both the grid area and the shapes pane.

If you want to maximize the drawing window to fill the Visio screen, click the Maximize button in the title bar of the collapsed window.

When you click this button, the drawing window will expand to fill the Visio screen. This maximized view is what you have seen through most of this manual so far.

If you click the Restore up button…

The Drawing window will expand, but it will not completely fill the Visio screen. Instead, there will be a border around the drawing window that separates it from the rest of the Visio screen.

If you look carefully at the following images, you can see the differences between a maximized drawing window, and one that is restored up.

In the Image above, the drawing window has been restored up. You should notice the border around the drawing window, and the changes in the Drawing window’s title bar.

In the Image below, the Drawing window has been maximized.

When you click the restore up button, you can drag the surrounding border of the drawing window with your mouse to resize it.

You can also move the resized drawing window around in the Visio screen by dragging its title bar.

You can maximize or minimize the resized drawing window at any time, by using the appropriate buttons in the drawing window’s title bar.

For more information on working with multiple open files, and switching between windows, see Lesson 1.3

Using Zoom

When you are creating a drawing in Visio, you may want to see an overview of your entire diagram, or you may want to focus in on a particular part of your diagram.

Since there is only a limited space on your computer screen, you cannot see a close up of a particular shape and the overall diagram at the same time; however, you can obtain these views independently by using the Visio Zoom feature.

Visio’s Zoom control is found on the Standard toolbar as shown in the image below.

Basically, there are two ways that you can use this zoom control. You can enter a value directly into the zoom control’s field, or you can click the arrow beside the field and select a zoom level form the list provided.

To enter a value into the zoom field directly, just click in the field to place your curser there and type a number. You can enter any number from 1 to 3098. When you press your Enter key, Visio will zoom in or out on the drawing based on the value (as a percent) that you entered.

For example, if you are viewing a drawing at 75% zoom, and you enter a value of 25, Visio will interpret this as a command to switch to 25% zoom. This will display a smaller view of the drawing than the 75% zoom level (25% < 75%).

If you enter a value of 200, Visio will zoom the drawing in to a 200% magnification. This will make the shapes and connections in your drawing much larger.

The exact same effect happens if you use the Zoom drop list to select a zoom level. In the following image, a zoom level of 75% has been selected from the drop list.

Now, in the next image, a zoom level of 150% has been selected.

As you can see, the diagram with the larger zoom setting provides more detail, but also displays a smaller drawing area.

If you zoom in on a drawing so that only a part of it can be seen in your Visio screen, you can survey the rest of drawing by using the Scroll bars provided in the drawing Window.

You should also notice that the Shapes pane has been closed, to allow for more grid (diagram) area in the drawing window. To close the shapes pane, just click the close (x) button on the shapes pane title bar.

To make the shapes pane appear again, click the View menu followed by the Shapes Window option.

Using Guides

Guides can help a great deal when you are trying to neatly arrange and organize shapes in your drawing.

As you already know, Visio provides rulers at the top and side of the drawing area.

If you wish, you can place your mouse pointer on either of these rulers, and then drag your mouse onto the drawing area. When you do this, a blue dotted line will appear across the grid area at the point where you stop dragging. This blue line is called a guide.

If you drag a guide down from the top ruler, it will appear as a horizontal line across the drawing area. If you drag a guide over from the side ruler, it will appear as a vertical line on the drawing area.

In the image shown on the following page, one guide has been dragged down from the tip ruler, and another has been dragged over from the side ruler.

These guides can help you place shapes along straight lines, when you drag a shape over to your drawing and place it close to a guide, it will snap (attach one edge) to the guide.

In the image that follows, guides were used to place a series of shapes along a 90 degree angle.

Using the Dynamic Grid

There is another layout tool available in Visio 2007 called the Dynamic Grid. When you use this tool, Visio will automatically suggest a good spot (provide a temporary guide line) when you add a shape to your drawing. The alignment that is suggested by Visio will be based on the position of the shape you added just before, or the other shapes in your drawing.

To use the Dynamic Grid, click the Tools menu followed by the Snap and Glue option.

When you follow this option, the Snap and Glue dialogue will appear on your screen.

To activate the Dynamic Grid, click to place a checkmark in the Dynamic Grid checkbox and click OK in the dialogue.

Once the dynamic Grid is activated, you can drag shapes over to your drawing, and look for the temporary guide lines that appear.

These guidelines will appear when your shape is aligned correctly relative to another shape in your drawing (usually the previously added shape).

In the image above, a diamond shape has been dragged to the drawing area. When the diamond is perfectly aligned with the rectangle shape, a faint guideline appears (indicated in the drawing by the red arrow). If you stop dragging at this point, the newly added shape will be nicely aligned relative to the other shape.

Viewing or Hiding Rulers, Grids, Guides, and Connection Points

Typically, when you are creating a drawing in Visio, you will want to see gridlines, rulers, guides, and connection points. These reference tools can be a big help when you are laying out the shapes in your drawing.

The rulers can tell you the size of your shapes, and the gridlines and guides can help you position the shapes correctly.

If you would like to see what you drawing looks like without these reference tools, click the View menu on the main menu bar.

When the View menu appears, you will see options for the Grid, Guides, Connection Points, and Rulers.

If the Rulers, Grid, Guides, or Connection Points are visible on your drawing area, there will be a checkmark next to the appropriate option in the View menu. If one of these options does not have a checkmark by it, the corresponding reference tool will not be visible on the drawing area. (In the image above, all of the reference tool options have checkmarks by them, so all of these tools will be visible on the drawing).

To remove or hide one or more of these tools, just click the option or options in question to remove or add its checkmark.

The following image shows the same drawing that was shown before, but without the guides, grid, rulers, or connection points.

Lesson 5.2: Managing Windows

In the previous lesson, we discussed how to manage Drawing Windows by using the Minimize, Maximize and Restore buttons. In this lesson, we will expand on the Window management theme by learning about the commands on Visio’s Window menu.

The Window commands discussed in this lesson include the New window command, the Tile command, the Cascade command, and the Show ShapeSheet command.

Creating a New Window

To create a new Window in Visio, click the Window menu on the main menu bar, and then click the New Window option.

When you follow this command option, a new window will appear on your Visio screen. If you have a drawing already open in Visio, the new window will display this same drawing. The name of the new window will consist of the name of the original drawing followed by a number (the number will correspond to how many windows have been created on the drawing).

If you have two different drawings open in Visio, clicking the New Window option on the Window menu will create a new window for which ever drawing is active when the new window Command was used.

To make a drawing active, just click in the window that displays it.

Remember, having multiple windows open on the same drawing is different from having multiple drawings open. If multiple windows are open in Visio, and each window is for a different drawing, you cannot save the Visio window layout when you save one of the drawing files.

If each open window is displays the same drawing, the multiple window layout will be saved when you save the drawing file.

Cascading Windows

To cascade two or more windows in Visio, click the Window menu followed by the Cascade option. When you follow this option, the open windows in Visio will be arranged so that one window overlaps another.

If you click on the title bar of one of the cascaded windows (or in the window itself) it will become active and come to the foreground).

Tiling Windows

You can Tile multiple open windows in a similar way. To do this, just click the Window Menu followed by the Tile option.

Once you use this command, the open windows in Visio will be distributed over equal portions of the Visio screen.

The image on the preceding page shows what the Visio screen looks like after tiling two windows. The following image shows what the Visio screen looks like after tiling four open windows.

Remember, when you cascade or tile windows, you can arrange them further by dragging them around the screen using the given window’s title bar. You can also resize any given window by dragging the window’s borders or corners with your mouse.

One of the great things about having multiple drawing windows open at the same time, is that you can cut or copy a shape from one drawing (window) and paste it into another drawing (window).

(Note: you can cut, copy, or paste a shape in Visio by right clicking on it, and selecting the appropriate option from the popup menu).

Using the ShapeSheet

Every shape or object in Visio has a corresponding ShapeSheet spread sheet. All of the data about a shape, such as the height, the width, color, rotation angle and more, are stored in this shape spreadsheet.

Pretty much any attribute of a given shape that can be modified within the drawing window, can also be modified by changing values or formulas in the ShapeSheet. In a sense, the data and formulas in a shape’s ShapeSheet tells Visio how to render (draw) the shape onto your screen.

To display the ShapeSheet window (shape spreadsheet) for a given shape, select the shape in the drawing area by clicking on it and then click the Window menu followed by the Show Shape Sheet option.

When you perform this action, a ShapeSheet window for the given shape will appear on your screen.

By default, the ShapeSheet window will appear on the Visio screen beneath the Drawing window. For a better view of both windows, click the Window menu followed by the Tile option to tile the Drawing window and the ShapeSheet window side by side.

The image on the following page shows a Drawing window and the shape sheet window corresponding to the selected shape. The windows are tiles side by side.

If you examine the ShapeSheet window, you will see that the ShapeSheet is really just a spread sheet that is broken into several sections. Each section in the ShapeSheet spreadsheet is labeled with a name (in bold print). Furthermore, each section of the ShapeSheet is used to describe a particular aspect of the shape’s geometry or behavior.

To view all of the sections in the ShapeSheet window, use the scrollbar on the right to scroll down over the window’s contents.

To see a glimpse of the relationship between the shape and the ShapeSheet, observe the values in the Shape Transform section of the ShapeSheet while moving or resizing the shape in your drawing window with your mouse.

As you move, resize, or rotate the shape, you should see changes in the width, height, angle, and PinX and PinY cells of the Shape Transform section.

As you can see, the Geometry of the shape itself, and the data in the shape window are linked. If you change an aspect of the shape in the drawing window, the data for an attribute in the Shape sheet will most likely change as well. Similarly, if you change data in the ShapeSheet, the corresponding shape will change in the drawing window.

If you right click on a cell in the ShapeSheet spreadsheet, a popup menu will appear. On this menu, there are options to insert sections (if you want to create more data about a shape), insert rows (if you want to add more data to an existing section), delete rows (to remove data), delete sections, and more.

You can select an individual row in the ShapeSheet spreadsheet by clicking the number in bold on the left of that row.

You can also click an individual cell in the ShapeSheet spreadsheet, and edit its contents directly. When you press your Enter key, the data you entered into the cell will be implemented for the shape.

You should also notice that many of the cells are indexed, like cells in an Excel spreadsheet. For example, in the preceding image, cell X2 holds the word “Width”. You can even enter formulas in these ShapeSheet cells that reference other cells in the shape sheet using these indexes (a little bit like using cell references in Excel).

The following table provides a brief overview of some of the main sections that can be found in a shape’s ShapeSheet spreadsheet.

Shape Transform This section contains general shape information like the width, height, and angle of rotation. There is also true or false data telling if the shape has been flipped horizontally or vertically

Shape Data This section contains cells that show and control the user supplied data that can be stored in a shape (see lesson 3.3)

Connection Points This section stores the data for all of the connection points of an object

Actions The cells in this section can store custom commands for a shape that will appear on the shapes popup menu. This section also can store actions associated with these commands.

Geometry The cells in this section contain the coordinates for the vertices, lines, and arcs that are used to construct the shape

If you click (select) a cell in this section, you should see a black handle appear on the shape itself, indicating what the particular cell refers to

Events The cells in this section contain formulas that are executed when an event (like double clicking the shape) occurs

Layers This section contains data on the layers and layer properties that are associated with a shape. This table only describes a few of the sections in the ShapeSheet. For very detailed information on the sections and data in the ShapeSheet you can use the Visio help features.

To start, click the Help menu followed by the Developer Reference option. When the Developer Reference help window appears, display the Search drop list and select the Visio ShapeSheet Help option. When the ShapeSheet options appear in the window, try the ShapeSheet Reference option.

Lesson 5.3: More Visio Windows

Believe it or not, Visio 2007 has still more windows that you can take advantage of to help you view and enhance you drawings and shapes.

In this lesson, we will have a look at look at the Pan and Zoom window, The Shape Data window, the size and Position window, The Draw Explorer window, and the External Data Window.

Using the Pan and Zoom Window

To display the Pan and Zoom window on your screen, click the View menu on the main toolbar, and then click the Pan and Zoom Window option.

Once you perform this action, you will see the Pan and Zoom window appear on your screen.

You can resize the Pan and Zoom window by dragging on its borders, and you can move it about your Visio screen by dragging the title bar.

If you take a closer look at the Pan and Zoom window, you will see that it contains a red viewing frame, and a zoom slider switch. These components are indicated by the red arrows in the following image.

If you place your mouse pointer inside the red viewing frame, (Between the thick red bars) you can then drag the red frame up and down, and also to the left and right.

The red frame as it appears in the Pan and Zoom window is exactly proportionate to the current size of the area shown in the drawing window. As a matter of fact, if you resize your drawing window, the red frame in the Pan and Zoom window will be resized as well.

The part of the drawing that is surrounded by the red frame in the Pan and Zoom window will be displayed in the Drawing window.

Once you have “panned” over the part of the drawing that you want to view, you can use the zoom slider switch in the Pan and Zoom window to zoom in or out on that section of the drawing.

You can close the Pan and Zoom window at any time by clicking the close (x) button on the Pan and Zoom title bar, or by clicking the View menu and then clicking the Pan and Zoom window option to deselect it.

Using the Shape Data Window

You can view the Shape Data window for a specific shape, by clicking the View Menu followed by the Shape Data Window option, and then selecting the shape.

Once you do this, the Shape Data window will be visible on your screen and show the data for the selected shape.

As with other windows, you can resize the shape data window by dragging its borders, and you can move it around the screen by dragging on the title bar.

Typically, the Shape Data window will contain fields that you can use to enter specific data that you want to store with the shape. The fields that appear in the shape data window can be different from shape to shape.

To enter data using the Shape Data window, just click in the appropriate field and enter the data.

Once the Shape Data window is visible on your screen, you can view or modify the shape data for any shape in you drawing by simply selecting the shape. The Shape data window will allow the user to access the shape data for whatever shape is currently selected.

You can even define your own data fields for a shape, by right clicking on the shape and clicking the Data option followed by the Shape Data option on the popup menu.

In the Shape data dialogue that appears, click the define button to create user defined data fields for the shape (please see lesson 3.3 for more information). These User defined data fields will also be accessible in the Shape Data window when the shape in question is selected.

(Please see Lesson 3.3 for a more detailed description of adding Data fields to a shape).

Using the Size and Position Window

If you want to position or resize your shape based on precise coordinates, you can use the Size and Position window.

To use this feature to resize or move a shape, first select the shape in question by clicking on it, and then click the View menu followed by the Size and Position Window option.

This action will display the Visio size and Position window on your screen (as shown in the following image).

The values that appear in this window indicate the current position and size of the selected shape. The x and y values are the position coordinates, and the size coordinates are given in the Width and Height fields.

You can also see a value for the rotation angle of the shape in the Angle field.

If you know the precise dimensions and position that you want your shape to have, you can enter the values directly in the fields in this window. To enter a value, just click in the appropriate field to place your curser there.

As soon as you type a value into a field and enter it (by clicking in another field or by hitting your Enter key) the change will be implemented in the selected shape.

When the Size and Position window is visible on your screen, you can see the size and position information for any shape just by clicking on the shape to select it. The Size and Position window will display information corresponding to whatever shape is currently selected.

Using the Drawing Explorer Window

Essentially, the Drawing Explorer window organizes much of the information related to a Visio drawing into a neat and familiar folder structure.

To view the Drawing explorer window, just click the View menu, followed by the Drawing Explorer Window option.

Once the Drawing Window opens, you can click on a folder in the window to expand it and see the given folder’s contents.

To collapse a folder and hide its contents, just click the (‐) sign next to the folder. You can right click on an item (like a shape for example) in the Drawing explorer window, and then copy or cut the shape.

You could then paste the shape in another drawing, or in the Drawing Explorer window associated with another drawing.

If the Drawing Explorer window is open for a drawing, and you open another different drawing at the same time; a Drawing Explorer window will appear for the second drawing as well. You could then copy an item (like a shape) from one Drawing Explorer window, and paste the shape into another drawing, or into the Drawing Explorer window associated with another drawing.

As you can see, the Drawing Explorer window not only provides a folder view of your drawings contents; but also provides a means of manipulating those contents.

The External Data Window and External Data Features

Note: Visio 2007 Professional is required to use the External Data features used here. If you use Visio 2007 Standard, the external data functionality described here will not be available.

If you use Visio 2007 Professional, you can actually link data from external sources to your Visio drawings. A quick and easy way to do this is to use the External Data window and the New Data Selector wizard.

To display the External Data Window, click the View menu followed by the External Data window option.

When the External Data window appears, it should be tiled on the bottom of the Visio 2007 Professional screen.

Once you see the External Data Window appear on your screen, you can click the Link Data to Shapes option to begin the process of linking the external data.

When you click this option, a Data Selector wizard dialogue will appear.

In the first stage of the wizard, select the radio button corresponding to the type of external data source that you want to use.

In the image above, the data source will be a Microsoft Excel workbook. As you can see, you can also link to Access databases, SharePoint Services lists, Microsoft SQL servers, and more.

Once you select the data source that you want to use, click the Next button to move on to the next step of the wizard. The remainder of this discussion will deal with using an Excel workbook data source.

In the next stage of the wizard, you will be able to choose the particular data source (in this case an Excel workbook) that you want.

To choose your data source, click the Browse button to display a Data Selector dialogue. Use the navigation controls in the dialogue to find the Excel workbook that you want to use. Once you find it, click on the file to select it, and then click the Open button.

When you click the open button, the path of the selected file will be used to import the external data.

Click the Next button in the Data selector wizard dialogue to move on to the next step.

In the next stage of the wizard, you can select the page or range that contains the data that you want to use. (Remember, we are accessing am Excel workbook).

You can use the drop list provided to select the data option of your choice from the list of worksheets or ranges available). Once you are ready, click the next button to continue.

In the next stage of the wizard, you can choose the columns and rows that you want to include in the linked data.

In this example, we are selecting All columns and All rows. If you want to select only some specific columns or rows, click the Select columns button or the Select rows button respectively. When you click either of these buttons, a corresponding dialogue will appear allowing you to specify which columns (or which rows) that you want to include.

Once you are ready to proceed, click the Next button to continue. Keep going through the stages of the wizard until you reach the final stage as shown below.

At this point, just click the Finish button to close the Data selector wizard, and import the data into the External Data window.

Once the data is in the External Data window, you can associate rows of the data with shapes in the drawing. To do this, use your mouse to drag a row of data up from the External data window onto a shape:

You can use this method to link different rows of data to the different shapes in your drawing.

Suppose you have a situation where each shape in your drawing represents a stage in a process; and the data describing that process is stored externally in an Excel spreadsheet. By using the External Data window, you can link each stage (shape) in the diagram to the corresponding row of data in the spreadsheet.

To view the linked data in a shape, display the shape data window (discussed earlier in this lesson) and then select the shape that contains the data that you want to see. The shape’s linked data will appear in the Shape Data window.

When shapes in your drawing use external data, you can refresh the data by clicking the Data menu and then clicking the Refresh Data option.

Clicking this option will update the shapes that are linked to the external data, so that the data in the shapes reflect any relevant data that has been changed in the underlying data source.

You can also display the external data in a shape by using Visio 2007 Professional’s new Data Graphics feature.

To access these features, click the Data menu followed by the Display Data on Shapes option.

When you follow these options, the Data Graphics task pane will appear on your Visio Professional screen.

To apply data graphics to a shape, first select the shape, and then click the data graphics option that you want to use from the Data graphics task pane.

Once you add a data graphic to a shape, the shape data (external data in this case) will appear right in the drawing in a special “data graphic”

Once you link a drawing to external data by importing the data into the External Data window, the linked data will appear in the External Data window every time you open the drawing file.

Remember, the features discussed in relation to external data and data graphics, are available in Visio 2007 Professional.

Lesson 5.4: Using Print Preview

At this point in the manual, you should know quite a bit about Visio 2007. However, we have yet to deal with the important topic of how to print out your drawings. In this regard, the Print Preview feature is a great tool for getting an idea of what your printed documents (Visio drawings in this case) will look like before they are printed.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to use Visio’s Print Preview feature. More specifically, you’ll learn how to open Print Preview, how to Use the Print Preview toolbar, and how to use Page Setup.

In addition, you will also learn how to Change the View options, and How to Navigate the Print Preview of your drawing.

Opening Print Preview

To open Print Preview, click the file menu, followed by the Print Preview Option.

Once you perform this action, the Print Preview screen will appear.

As you can see, the Print Preview screen gives you a pretty good idea of what your Visio drawing will look like, before you print it.

Using the Print Preview Toolbar

At the top of the Print Preview screen, you will find the Print Preview toolbar. As with any other Visio toolbar, you can access commands and features by clicking the toolbar buttons, or by making selections from the toolbar drop lists.

Just as with other toolbars, if you let your mouse pointer hover over a button on the Print Preview toolbar, you will see a small tool tip telling you the name of that button.

Some of the buttons on the Print Preview toolbar are the same as buttons found on the standard toolbar. The following table provides a brief overview of what the Print Preview toolbar commands are for.

New, Open, and Save buttons The New, Open, and Save buttons will create a new drawing, display the Open dialogue, and save the current drawing respectively

These buttons are the same as the New, Open, and Save options on the standard toolbar

Print button The Print button will send the drawing to the current printer to be printed.

Print Dialogue command This Print command will display the Print dialogue

Page Setup command This button will display the Print Setup tab of the Page Setup dialogue

The Current Printer drop list allows you to select the printer that the drawing will be sent to

Navigation buttons These buttons allow you to display different pages in your drawing

View buttons The View buttons change the view of the drawing that appears in the Print Preview screen

Zoom buttons The Zoom buttons allow you to zoom in and out on the drawing in Print Preview

Close button The close button will close the Print preview and return you to the standard Visio screen.

Help button This Help button will open a standard Visio Help Window.

You can click and drag the vertical series of dots at the left of the Print Preview toolbar, to move it around the screen. As with other toolbars, you can relocate the Print Preview toolbar by dragging it and dropping it, or by docking it.

Zooming In and Out

If you click the Zoom In button on the Print Preview toolbar, the preview for the drawing will be enlarged in the print preview screen. This will allow you to view a preview that is closer to the actual size of the printed page.

For example, here is a drawing before clicking the Zoom in button.

The following image shows the same drawing after the Zoom in button has been clicked.

Now you can read the text inside the shapes, and see what your drawing looks like in more detail. You can also use the scroll bars to view any parts of the image that are beyond the borders of the Print Preview screen.

To return to the original (zoomed out) drawing, just click the Zoom out button.

Changing View Options

On the Print Preview toolbar, you will see three View Control buttons.

These buttons are (in order from left to right) the Single Tile button, The Whole Page button, and the Current view button.

The Single Tile button and the Whole Page button can be used when the drawing you want to print has been enlarged so that it is bigger than a single sheet of printer paper.

For example, in the following image the Drawing has been enlarged (using the Page Setup Dialogue) so that it will require 4 sheets of paper.

The view shown in this image is the whole Page view . This view shows the entire drawing page, which will require four printed sheets. If you print this drawing, four printed pages will be produced, with each page containing part of the drawing.

When this whole page view is used (and the size of the drawing requires more than one sheet), you will see a red rectangle in the Print Preview screen. This red rectangle will move to whatever sheet that you move your mouse pointer over.

If you click on the sheet that is surrounded by the Red border, you will activate the Single Tile view for that sheet. For example, clicking in the red rectangle shown above will change the view to that shown in the image below.

When you are viewing a single sheet, you will see only the part of the drawing that appears on that sheet.

When a drawing requires two or more sheets to print, you can also click the Single Tile view button…

…to view a single sheet. When you click this button, a single sheet will appear in the Print Preview screen. If the drawing requires multiple sheets, you can switch between them by using the navigation buttons on the toolbar.

The last view button is called the Current View button…

This displays the view of the drawing shown in the main Visio drawing area.

Have a look at the following image as an example.

As you can see in this image of the main Visio screen, the drawing is only partially visible. That is, only a specific part of the drawing is currently viewable in the drawing window.

If you open up the Print Preview, and then click the Current View button, the print preview screen will show the same view of the drawing as the view currently displayed in the drawing window.

As you can see from the image above, clicking the Current View button in the Print Preview screen will show the same view that is displayed in the Visio drawing window.

Remember, even though you may be viewing only a single sheet or only part of the drawing in the Print Preview screen; when you print, the entire drawing (all parts)will be printed.

Navigating Print Preview

There are three basic ways to navigate in the Print Preview screen. You can use the navigation buttons on the Print Preview toolbar, the page tabs near the bottom of the Print Preview screen, and the scroll bars on the right side and bottom.

You can use the scroll bars to move the current contents of the Print Preview screen to the left or right (bottom scroll bar) or up and down (vertical scroll bar).

If your drawing has multiple drawing pages, you can view each page by clicking the corresponding page tab at the bottom.

You can also use the navigation buttons at the top…

…to move back and forth between multiple drawing pages.

If a single drawing page is enlarged so that it requires multiple printed sheets, you can use the navigation buttons to move back and forth through the individual sheets required for that drawing page.

If you click the First Tile button…

…the current preview will jump to the first page or sheet.

If you click the Last Tile button…

…the current preview will jump to the last page or sheet.

Finally, you can use the center navigation buttons to move to the next tile (right pointing arrow) or the previous tile (left pointing arrow).

Setting Print Options

If you click the Setup button on the Print Preview toolbar, the Page Setup dialogue will appear on your screen with the Print Setup tab opened.

(You should remember the Page Setup dialogue from the discussion in lesson 2.6 of this manual. The Page Setup dialogue has a wide variety of options for setting up your page size, drawing scale, page properties, and more).

In the Print Setup tab of the Page setup dialogue, you will see a number of options for setting up how your drawing will be printed.

Under the Printer Paper heading, you can select the size of the printer paper you are using, and also specify a Portrait or Landscape orientation. The following image shows the print preview for a “Portrait” oriented page.

The image below shows the Print Preview for a “landscape” oriented page.

If you click the Setup button in the Print Setup tab of the Page setup dialogue, you will see another dialogue appear like the following.

In this Print Setup dialogue, you can specify Left, Right, Top, and Bottom margins for your printed pages. You can also specify (using the Small Drawings checkboxes) how smaller drawings are centered with respect to the printed page.

If you specify settings in this dialogue, click the OK button to implement them and close the dialogue. At this point you will be returned to the Print Setup tab of the Page Setup dialogue.

Under the Print Zoom headings, you can increase the size of the drawing for printing purposes only. You can do this by specifying a zoom level after you select the “Adjust to” radio button, or you can select the “Fit to” radio button and then specify how many pages you want your printed drawing to printed on.

As an example, take a look at the following Print Zoom settings.

In this example, the Print Zoom has been set to enlarge the drawing so that it requires two sheets across and two sheets down. When the dialogue’s Ok button is clicked, the settings will be implemented

As a result of the Print zoom settings, the drawing has been distributed over four sheets. When it is printed, each sheet will display a part of the drawing.

Note: A drawing should be centered in the print preview page if it is also centered over the grid in the actual drawing window especially if the drawing page size has also been specified to be the same as the printer paper size (this particular option can be specified under the Page Size tab of the Page Setup dialogue, as shown below).

Finally, at the bottom of the Print Setup tab, you will see a Gridlines checkbox.

If you put a checkmark in this checkbox and click the OK button, gridlines will appear on the print preview.

When gridlines are included as described above, they will also appear on the printed copies of the drawing.

Lesson 5.5: Printing a Drawing

Now that you know how to use Visio’s Print Preview feature and set up some basic print settings, it is time to take the next step and actually print your drawing.

In this lesson you will learn some Visio Print commands, and how to use the Visio Print dialogue. You will also learn how to set printer options, select a page range, and specify the number of printed copies.

Print Commands

In Visio 2007, there are multiple print commands available to you. To start, if you examine the Standard Toolbar, you will see that there is a print button available.

If you click this Print button, the contents of the current drawing window will be printed, and the Print Preview screen will not be opened.

You can also press the control button and the P button on your keyboard (Ctrl + P shortcut) to print your current drawing. If you use the Ctrl + P shortcut, the drawing will not print directly. Instead, the Print dialogue will appear on your screen first. From this dialogue you can proceed to print your form.

The print dialogue will be discussed in more detail in the following pages.

You can also click the file menu, and then click the Print option.

Performing this action will also display the Print dialogue. As before, you can proceed to print your Drawing from within the print dialogue.

Finally, you can display the Print Preview Screen, and then click the one of the Print buttons on the Print Preview toolbar. The button with the printer icon will print the currently viewed drawing directly. The button with the word “Print” will display the Print dialogue.

Using the Print Dialogue

In the previous pages, we mentioned that using the Print option on the File menu, (File|Print), or using the Ctrl + P shortcut, will display the Print dialogue.

The following image shows what the Print dialogue looks like.

In this dialogue, you can specify the particular printer that you want to use, from a list of available printers. This list is of printers will appear if you click the down pointing arrow at the right side of the Name field.

Just click on an item in the list to select it as the destination printer.

When you select a printer, you can click the Properties button next to the Name field to see a properties dialogue for the selected printer. You can then use this Printer properties dialogue to configure your printer options.

In the bottom half of the Print dialogue you will find a set of options for choosing a print range, and another set of options for setting up print copies.

Basically, the print range is a subset of the total amount of drawing pages that will be printed; and a copy is one complete printing of all pages in the print range.

Finally, there is also set of check boxes on the right side of Print dialogue underneath the Properties button.

If you select the No background checkbox, backgrounds in your drawing will not be printed.

If you select the Color as Black checkbox, color drawings will be printed as black and white.

Finally, if you select the Print to file checkbox, a file will be created from your Visio document. Your document will not be printed, but the file that is saved will be formatted in a way so that it can be printed later.

When you are finished and you click the OK button in the Print dialogue, the drawing will be printed directly; (that is, the current drawing will be sent directly to the printer with the settings that you just chose in the Print dialogue).

Setting Printer Options

As mentioned above, if you click the Properties button in the Print dialogue, you will see a properties dialogue for the selected printer.

Under the Layout tab in this dialogue, you can use the Orientation drop list to specify a portrait or a Landscape orientation for the print‐out. These settings can be found under the Orientation heading.

The options in the Printer Properties dialogue can be different depending on which printer is currently selected. The dialogue shown above corresponds to the Microsoft XPS Document writer.

The dialogue shown below corresponds to a conventional printer.

If you look under the Page Order heading, you will see radio buttons for specifying the page print order. If your Drawing has two or more pages, you can use these settings to specify the order in which these pages are printed.

If you select Back to Front, the last of the pages in the drawing will be printed out first. Similarly, if you select Front to Back (the default setting) the pages will be printed out in the natural order that they occur.

Finally, you can use the Pages per sheet drop list to specify how many form pages will appear on a printed sheet.

In the dialogue shown below, the orientation has been set to Landscape, the order has been set to “Back to Front” and the pages per sheet have been set to two.

You should notice that when you adjust your settings, you will see a preview of what a printed sheet will look like in the main area of the dialogue.

To print your drawing under these settings, click the OK button in the lower right, and then click the OK button in the Print dialogue after the Printer properties dialogue disappears from your screen.

If you click the Paper/Quality tab in the Printer properties dialogue, you can set up options for the Paper Source (how the paper will be conveyed to the printer), and the color of the printed copies.

(There may also be options available for selecting the paper quality, depending on what type of printer you use).

Note: The Printer Options available when you click the Properties button in the Print dialogue may vary depending on what type of print destination is selected. Different printers can have different options or features, and the Printer Properties that appear above may not exactly resemble the options shown for another system. For the most part, however, the basic printer options should be similar to what is shown in the preceding pages).

Copies and Page Ranges

Near the bottom of the Print dialogue, you will see options for specifying a page range, and the number of copies.

Under the Print Range heading, you will see radio buttons labeled All Current Page, and Pages. If you select the “All” radio button, all pages that are required to print the form view will be printed.

If you select the Current Page option, only the currently viewed page will be printed.

If you select the Pages radio button, you can specify a “From” and “To” page in the fields provided. When you specify a range in this way, all pages between and including the “From” and “To” pages will be printed. Any pages outside of this range will not be printed.

In the following image the page range from 2 to 4 has been specified.

At this point, clicking the Ok button in the dialogue would print pages 2, 3, and 4.

You will also notice a selection radio button and a current view radio button under the Page Range heading. If you want to print only a selected part of your drawing page, you can first make a selection in the drawing, then display the Print dialogue, and then click the Selection radio button. If you do this, only the selected part of your drawing will be printed when you click OK in the Print dialogue.

If you select the current view option, only the currently active drawing page will be printed. You can then use the checkbox provided to ensure that the drawing is sized to fit on just one sheet.

Under the Copies heading, you can specify a number of copies to be printed, and whether or not the copies are collated.

In these settings, a single printed copy refers to all of the pages that are required to display the drawing that is being printed. For example, if one copy of the drawing requires 3 printed pages, three copies of the drawing would require 9 printed pages.

You can enter the amount of copies that you want by clicking the arrows (in the right of the Number of Copies field) to increment the value; or by typing the value into the field directly.

To collate the copies, just put a check mark in the Collate checkbox. If the copies are collated, the printed pages will be grouped by copy, not by page number.

For example, if you are printing three copies and each copy has three pages, an uncollated printout would be 111,222,333, (where 1 represents the first page in a copy, 2 represents the second page in a copy, and 3 represents the third page).

A collated printout would be grouped by copy rather than by page number; and the output would be 123, 123, 123, where each group of three pages makes up one copy.

Remember, when you are finished setting up your Print dialogue options, click the OK button in the lower right of the dialogue to send your Visio drawing to the printer.

Section 5: Review Questions

1. You can hide or display grids, rulers, and guides by using the… A. Data menu B. Shapes pane C. File menu D. View menu

2. Which one of the following is not an option on the Window menu? A. Cascade B. Tile C. New Window D. Bring to front

3. Which one of the following is not found on the View menu? A. Pan & Zoom window B. Shape Data window C. Size and Position window D. Layer Window

4. How many Tabs are on the Page Setup dialogue box? A. 3 B. 10 C. 1 D. 6

5. Which one of the following statements is false? A. You can change a shape by editing the data in the ShapeSheet B. You can change the data in the ShapeSheet by modifying a shape directly C. Only a few shapes have corresponding shape sheets D. A shape’s shape sheet can be displayed by selecting the shape and then using the Window menu

6. If a file has three pages and you print two copies, a collated printout would be… A. Page 1 page 2 page 3, page 1 page 2 page 3 B. Page 1 page 1, page 2 page 2, page 3 page 3 C. Page 1 page 3, page 2, page 2, page 3 page1 D. None of the above

7. If a file has three pages and you print three copies, an uncollated printout would be…

A. Page 1 page 1 page 1, page2 page 2 page 2, page3 page 3 page 3 B. Page 1 Page 2 Page 3, Page 1 Page 2 Page 3, Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 C. Any of the above D. None of the above

8. Which one of the following commands is not a print command? A. Ctrl + P B. Print button on the standard toolbar C. Print Preview option on the File menu D. Print option on the File menu

9. You can add a header or footer to a drawing by using the… A. View menu B. File menu C. Print menu D. None of the above

10. The Print range is… A. The allowable paper sizes that can be used to print a drawing B. The set of pages that are to be printed C. A selected shape in a drawing that can be printed D. None of the above.

Index

Add Text to Drawing Check spelling ...... 158 Choosing a symbol source font...... 162 Inserting a symbol...... 160 Rotating a text block ...... 156 Type and edit text ...... 157 Using a text block...... 154 Using a text box...... 152 Adding Advanced Objects Active X control properties ...... 317 Adding an existing object...... 303 Adding an external object...... 299 Creating a new object ...... 301 Hyperlinks ...... 294 Inserting Active X controls ...... 309 Inserting CAD drawings...... 305 Adding Objects Adding a chart...... 279 Adding equations ...... 291 Equation dialogue box ...... 291 Formatting a chart ...... 287 Formatting an image...... 276 Inserting a comment...... 265 Inserting a Picture...... 268 Picking a chart type...... 284 Advanced File Tasks E‐mail a drawing ...... 367 Removing hidden information...... 365 Save as PDF or XPS ...... 372 Viewing file properties...... 361 What is AutoRecover? ...... 359 AutoConnect ...... 5, 22, 79, 228, 230, 319 AutoRecover ...... 321, 359, 360 Basic Editing Commands Adding fill color ...... 131 Adding shadows...... 137 Apply themes ...... 143 Cut, copy, and paste ...... 105 Duplicating shapes...... 122 Fill pattern and transparency...... 135

Moving shapes ...... 119 Resizing shapes ...... 115 Rotating shapes...... 121 Rounding shape corners ...... 142 Select objects by type ...... 102 Selecting all shapes ...... 101 Selecting shapes...... 99 Undo and redo ...... 110 Drawing Tools Toolbar Adding shapes...... 202 Viewing...... 200 What is? ...... 200 Format Painter ...... 81, 149, 150, 151 Apply formatting...... 151 Selecting a source ...... 150 Formatting Shapes Changing the border ...... 123 Formatting Text Changing font type and size...... 171 Changing text color ...... 168 Deleting pages...... 182 Page Setup dialogue...... 183 Selecting text...... 165 Switch between pages ...... 180 Text alignment (left, right, center justify)...... 174 Text effects...... 166 Getting Help in Visio Get help in dialogue box...... 78 Get help in task pane ...... 75 Help menu...... 60 Help window ...... 61, 65 Office Diagnostics ...... 65 Online vs. offline help ...... 71 Program updates...... 64 Question box...... 73 Searching topics ...... 70 Table of contents ...... 69 Topic navigation...... 68 Getting Started Window ..... 1, 3, 5, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62, 80, 82, 90, 197, 198, 322 Managing Drawings Adding guides...... 386 Dynamic grids...... 389 Maximize, minimize, and restore ...... 378

Show or hide Visio elements ...... 392 Zooming in and out...... 383 Managing Windows Cascading files...... 397 Creating new windows...... 395 Drawing Explorer ...... 416 External data, viewing and using ...... 418 Pan and zoom...... 408 Shape data window...... 413 ShapeSheet sections ...... 406 Size and position window ...... 415 Tiling files ...... 398 Using the ShapeSheet...... 400 Microsoft Visio Closing the program...... 12 Professional enhancements...... 4 Versions of ...... 3 What is? ...... 2 What's new in 2007?...... 5 Office Online ...... 49, 51, 54, 63 Opening Visio From Start menu...... 6 Run prompt...... 9 With Windows Vista...... 9 Page Setup Dialogue .....81, 177, 178, 183, 184, 185, 186, 190, 328, 329, 333, 434, 436, 440, 446, 449, 451, 466 PDF ...... 4, 5, 321, 359, 372, 373, 374, 375 Print Preview...... 434 Cycling views...... 440 Navigating your drawings ...... 445 Opening...... 434 Setting print options ...... 446 Zooming in and out...... 437 Printing a Drawing Collation ...... 465 Number of copies...... 463 Print commands...... 454 Print dialogue box...... 457 Printing page ranges ...... 463 Setting printer options...... 459 Shapes Pane...... 82 Add borders and titles ...... 94 Adding backgrounds ...... 90 Adding shapes...... 97

Enabling...... 88 Search for shapes...... 85 Viewing shapes ...... 90 Shapes, Other Options Adding data to shape...... 242 Adding from FIle menu ...... 194 Adding from Standard toolbar...... 198 Adding screen tips...... 205 Aligning and distributing...... 215 Configuring shape layout ...... 235 Connecting shapes...... 228 Double‐click behaviors...... 226 Flipping and rotating...... 212 Grouping shapes ...... 207 Layering shapes...... 210 Relayout shapes...... 240 Shape connector tool...... 232 Shape layout command ...... 238 Shape operations ...... 250 Snap and Glue ...... 223 Stacking shapes...... 249 Using AutoCOnnect...... 230 ShapeSheet ...... 227, 377, 395, 400, 401, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407, 466 Sheet sections ...... 406 Stencils Adding shapes to stencils...... 340 Copying shapes between stencils ...... 340 Creating stencils...... 338 Removing shapes from stencils ...... 344 Saving custom stencils ...... 345 Using Layers Activating layers...... 258 Adding layers...... 252 Assign shape to layer(s) ...... 260 Coloring and locking layers ...... 263 Group member properties...... 260 Hide or show layers...... 255 Visio Interface Closing a toolbar ...... 28 Formatting toolbar...... 23 Hide or show toolbars...... 27 Interface overview ...... 10 Menu overview ...... 15 Moving a toolbar...... 24

Standard toolbar...... 20 Status bar ...... 28 Working with Files Closing files ...... 40 File formats ...... 33, 352 Opening existing files...... 34 Recently used files ...... 36 Save shortcut ...... 350 Saving a file ...... 31, 349 Saving as a Web page ...... 354 Switching between files ...... 37 Working with Pages Adding pages...... 177 Working with Templates Choose template category...... 44 Creating your own template...... 329 Opening templates...... 322 Recently used templates...... 55 Saving templates...... 336 Search for templates...... 48 Stencils and shapes...... 58 Template details ...... 45 Template samples...... 56 Templates from Office Online...... 51 Using templates ...... 326 XPS...... 4, 6, 321, 359, 372, 373, 374, 460