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Visio lets you transform complicated text and tables that are hard to understand into visual diagrams that communicate information at a glance. There are many kinds of Visio diagrams, including organization charts, network diagrams, workflows, quickbooks download 2020 desktop pro home or office plans.

Getting started with Visio can посмотреть больше summarized into three basic steps: using microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free template, arranging and connecting shapes, and modifying shapes with text.

Note: If you have Visio Plan 2, you have access to both the installed app and the web version of Visio. With Visio Plan 1, you get just the web version of Visio. Not sure which license you have? You can check what version you have.

Note: See Install Visio if you haven’t installed the Visio app yet. Tutorial: 3 basic steps to create a Visio diagram:. Choose and open a template. Arrange and connect shapes. Add text to shapes and connectors. Templates include stencils, shapes, and grid measurements to help you get started quickly and easily when making your diagram.

Templates come with stencils that are full of the shapes needed to create a particular kind of drawing. The Home Plan template, for example, opens with stencils full of shapes such as walls, furniture, appliances, cabinets, and so on. The Organization Chart template includes distinct shapes for executives, managers, assistants, positions, consultants, vacancies, and more.

Some drawings require a special scale. For example, the Site Plan template opens with an engineering scale, where 1 inch represents 10 feet. Templates come ready with appropriate settings for microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free drawing type. Some templates have unique features that you can find on special tabs in the ribbon. For example, when you open the Microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free Layout template, a Plan tab appears. You can use the Plan tab to configure display options that are specific to office layout diagrams.

In some cases when you open a Http://replace.me/22801.txt template, a wizard helps you get started. For example, the Space Plan template opens with a wizard that helps you set up your space and room information.

Start the Autodesk autocad 2013 serial number free download app or open Visio on the web. Note: Haven’t installed Visio yet? If you have Visio Plan 2, you can download and install the Visio desktop app.

Select the template you want, or select Basic Diagram to start microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free scratch. You can also browse for more templates by clicking Categoriesand you can enter terms to search for templates. If you’re using the desktop link, you may have to specify a specific type of that template and then select Create.

To create your diagram, you drag shapes from the stencil in the Shapes window to the canvas and connect them. There are several ways to connect shapes, but the simplest way is with AutoConnect arrows. Microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free AutoConnect is available by default when your drawing is based on a template for a type that typically requires connections, like a flowchart.

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

That original is called a master shape. The shape that you put on your drawing is a copy — also called an instance — of that master. You can drag as many instances нажмите чтобы увидеть больше the same shape onto your drawing as you want. Instead of static pictures, you can create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data, are microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free to refresh, and dramatically increase your productivity.

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

You can use the square selection handles to change the читать полностью and width of your shape. Click and drag a selection handle on the corner of a shape to enlarge the shape without changing its proportions, or click and drag a selection handle on the side of microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free shape to make the shape taller or wider.

You can add data to each shape by typing it in the Shape Data window — on the View tab, in the Show group, click Task Panesand then click Shape Data. With Visio Professional Edition, you can also import data from an external data source. Data is not displayed in the drawing by default. If you want to display the data for lots of shapes apple application support windows 10 64 bit once, you can use a feature called data graphics, also on the Data tab.

The following illustration shows the data for two trees at once. Many Visio shapes have special behavior that you can find by stretching, right-clicking, or moving the yellow control handle on the shape. For example, you can stretch a People shape to show more people, or stretch the Growing flower shape to indicate growth. Tip: A great way to find out what a shape can do is to right-click it to see if there are any special commands on its shortcut menu. The shapes automatically connect to show the hierarchy.

Hold your mouse over one of the arrows and a mini toolbar appears with the top four shapes in the Quick Shapes area. Select the shape you want and it’ll automatically connect to the arrow you selected. You can also drag all читать полностью shapes onto the canvas. Then hold the mouse over a shape until the arrows appear. Then grab an arrow and drag it to a shape you want to connect to. If you’re using the Visio desktop app, you can also drag a new shape directly from the Shapes window to an existing shape’s arrows and connect them automatically.

Now it’s time to add details to your diagram by adding text. For more details about working with text, see Add, edit, move, or rotate text on shapes and Add text to a page.

Add text to a connector the same way. Click and drag it up, down, or beside the connector. To see other available themes, click More. Your diagram gets a new background, and, a new background page called Microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free This page you can see in the page tabs along the bottom of the canvas. To edit other text in the border, first select the entire border, and then click the text you want to change and start typing.

You may have to click more than once to get the text selected. Click Page-1 in the lower-right corner of the page to return to the drawing. Open Visio on the web. Note: If you microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free Visio Plan 2, you can also download and install the Visio desktop app.

Select Create under the template you want, or select Create under Basic Diagram to start from scratch. To create your diagram, you drag shapes from the stencil in the Shapes pane to the canvas and connect them. Microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free are several ways to connect shapes, but the simplest way is by auto-connecting them.

Note: See Add and connect shapes in Visio for the web or Change the size, rotation, and order of a shape in Visio for the web to learn more about using shapes. For more details about working with text, see Add and format text in Visio for the web.

Drag a shape from the Shapes window and drop it on the page. Leave the mouse pointer over the shape until four arrows windows 10 enterprise multi-session capability free download around the sides.

These are AutoConnect arrows, which give you several ways to automatically connect shapes. Hold the mouse pointer over one of the arrows and a mini toolbar appears, holding the top four shapes in the Quick Shapes area. Move the pointer over each to see a preview of that shape on your diagram. Click the one that you want, and that shape appears with a connector between it and your first shape.

Drag a shape from the Shapes window and hold it over a shape on the page until the arrows appear, then drop the shape on top of one of the arrows.

Hold the pointer over a shape until the arrows appear, then grab an arrow, drag it to a shape you want to connect to, and drop it in the middle of the second shape. Note: Some templates have other handy ways to add microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free connect shapes. Click a shape once and start typing.

Select a shape that has text. Click Home and use tools in the Font and Paragraph groups to format the text. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, move the pointer slowly over the different themes.

Each theme adds different colors and effects to the diagram. Click the microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free you want to apply. Click one of the background designs. Now look down at the bottom of Visio, just under the drawing page. There are two tabs: Page-1 and VBackground Page-1 is the page with the shapes on Вам free download screensaver windows 10 специалист, and VBackground-1 is a background page you just added.

Click VBackground-1 to see just the background page, and then click Page-1 to go back to the diagram. Click one of the options to add it to the diagram.

Microsoft Visio Step By Step : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.Beginner tutorial for Visio

Visio Online allows you to view, share, and collaborate with Visio diagrams created in Visio or Copyright & Disclaimer. © Copyright by Tutorials. This chapter guides you through procedures related to enhancing diagram effectiveness, creating and applying data graphics, editing data graphics, and creating.

Microsoft visio 2016 guide pdf free

Click a shape once and start typing. Select a shape that has text. Click Home and use tools in the Font and Paragraph groups to format the text. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, move the pointer slowly over the different themes.

Each theme adds different colors and effects to the diagram. Click the one you want to apply. Click one of the background designs. Now look down at the bottom of Visio, just under the drawing page.

There are two tabs: Page-1 and VBackground Page-1 is the page with the shapes on it, and VBackground-1 is a background page you just added.

Click VBackground-1 to see just the background page, and then click Page-1 to go back to the diagram. Click one of the options to add it to the diagram. Notice the border and title are added to the background page, so if you want to add the title, click the tab for the background page. Now click Title once and start typing.

The title changes to your new text. Visio allows you to apply built-in templates, to apply your own custom templates, and to search from a variety of templates available on Office. To use one of the built-in templates, under Template Categories , click the category that you want, and then click the template that you want and click Create.

To use your own template that you previously created, under Other Ways to Get Started , click New from existing , navigate to the file that you want and click Create New. To find a template on Office. Note: You can also search for templates on Office. To search for templates on Office. In the Search Office. Note: You are in the Backstage view when you first open Visio. If you have just opened Visio, proceed to the next step. When the diagram template opens, most of the space is taken up with a blank diagramming page.

Along the side is the Shapes window, which contains several stencils full of shapes. The stencils are identified by title bars at the top of the Shapes window; you might need to scroll the title bar pane to see them all. When you click a stencil title bar, the shapes appear in the pane below.

In the left pane of the Open dialog box, click the drive or folder that contains the drawing. In the right pane of the Open dialog box, open the folder that contains the drawing that you want. You can save your diagram as a standard Visio file that you can share with other people who have Visio. In addition, there are many different formats that you can save your diagram in directly from the Save As dialog box. Click Save As , and then select a format in the Save as type list. Web page in HTM format.

Image files and other resource files are saved in a subfolder of the location where you save the HTM file. For more information about how to add shapes, see Use the Shapes window to organize and find shapes and Find more shapes and stencils. To add a shape to the drawing page so that it is automatically connected when it is added to the page, do the following:. Hold your pointer over the shape that is already on the page.

Notice that small blue arrows appear on the four sides of the shape. These are AutoConnect arrows that you can use to connect shapes. A mini toolbar that contains four shapes appears, and a preview shape might also appear on the page. As you move the pointer over the shapes in the mini toolbar, previews of the shapes appear.

The shapes on the toolbar are the top four shapes from the Quick Shapes area. To automatically connect two shapes when you drag the second shape onto the page, do the following:.

Drag a second shape onto the drawing page and hold it so it covers the first shape, but do not drop it yet. Notice that the AutoConnect arrows appear. Move the second shape down over the AutoConnect arrow that points in the direction that you want, and drop it on the arrow. The Analyze shape is spaced a standard distance from the Service Request shape, and is connected automatically. When the AutoConnect arrows appear, move the pointer over an arrow that is pointing toward the other shape that you want to connect to.

Click and hold the AutoConnect arrow, and then drag a connector from it to the center of the other shape.

When the arrow is over the center of the other shape, a red border appears around the shape. Drop the connector to attach it, or “glue” it, to the shape. For more information about how to connect shapes, see Add connectors between shapes in Visio. When you start typing, Visio switches the selected shape to text editing mode.

Select the shape again. A small yellow control handle appears in the text area. Drag the yellow control handle to move the text. On the Home tab, in the Tools group, click the Text tool. The text box now has the characteristics of other shapes. You can select it and type to change the text, you can drag it to another part of the page, and you can format the text by using the Font and Paragraph groups on the Home tab.

In addition, when you hold the pointer over the text, AutoConnect arrows appear so you can connect the text to other shapes. For more information about how to add text blocks, see Add, edit, move, or rotate text and text blocks. In the Shape Data window, in the property row that you want, enter the data that you want. In the Type list, select the type of data that you want to be entered into that property. Right-click the shape again, point to Data , and this time click Shape Data.

The Shape Data window opens and displays all the data that has been defined for the shape. If all of the shapes have specific information, you can leave the Shape Data window open and click the shapes you are interested in to see the data that they contain. Adding shape data manually can add a lot of value to your diagram, but if your data is in a database or an Excel workbook, you can pull that data into your diagram automatically and connect the rows of data with specific shapes.

Use the Data Selector wizard to import your data into the External Data window. The data that appears in the External Data window is a snapshot of your source data at the time of import.

You can update the data in your drawing to match the changes in your source data by clicking Refresh All on the Data tab. On the first page of the Data Selector wizard, choose which of the following types of data sources have the data you’re using:.

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services list. After you click Finish on the last page of the Data Connection wizard, the External Data window appears with your imported data shown in a grid. Drag a row of data onto a shape to add automatically the data to the Shape Data for that shape.

Or, in the Shapes window, select a shape that you want to hold the data, and then drag a row of data and drop it on an empty area of the page. The selected shape is added to the page, connected to the data.

Click the background that you want. A new background page is added to the diagram, which you can see in the page tabs along the bottom of the diagramming area. To apply a border or title to your drawing:. The title and border are added to the background page named VBackground-1 by default.

To change the title and other text, you must make the changes on the background page; you can’t change the title on any other pages. Click the title text. The entire border is selected, but if you start typing it changes the default title text. To apply a unified color scheme and other formatting effects:.

On the Design tab, in the Themes group, hold your pointer over the various themes. A preview of the theme shows up on the page. Appropriate grid size and ruler measurements Some drawings require a special scale. Special tabs Some templates have unique features that you can find on special tabs in the ribbon.

Wizards to help you with special types of drawings In some cases when you open a Visio template, a wizard helps you get started. Rotating and resizing shapes Rotation handles The round handle located above a selected shape is called a rotation handle. Connection arrows for AutoConnect The connection arrows help you easily connect shapes to one another, as you saw in the previous section.

Selection handles for resizing shapes You can use the square selection handles to change the height and width of your shape. Visio shapes can hold data You can add data to each shape by typing it in the Shape Data window — on the View tab, in the Show group, click Task Panes , and then click Shape Data.

Visio shapes with special behavior Many Visio shapes have special behavior that you can find by stretching, right-clicking, or moving the yellow control handle on the shape. On the Design tab, hover the mouse pointer over the various themes.

Visio temporarily applies each theme as you hover the mouse pointer over them. Click the theme that you want to apply to the diagram. Click Design and then click Backgrounds. Click a background. Click a title style.

The title and border appear on the background page. At the bottom of the diagramming area, click the VBackground-1 tab. The entire border is selected, but when you start typing it changes the title text. Type your title, then press ESC. Tutorial: 3 basic steps to create a Visio diagram: Choose and open a template Arrange and connect shapes Add text to shapes and connectors Choose and open a template Templates include stencils, shapes, and grid measurements to help you get started quickly and easily when making your diagram.

Create a simple diagram Drag a shape from the Shapes window and drop it on the page. Find and apply a template Visio allows you to apply built-in templates, to apply your own custom templates, and to search from a variety of templates available on Office.

To find and apply a template in Visio, do the following: On the File tab, click New. Apart from the Shapes task pane, there are quite a few other panes, which can be accessed from the Task Panes dropdown menu in the View tab of the Ribbon. The Shape Data pane allows entry of additional shape metadata. This metadata is contextual and depends on the shape being selected. This is especially useful while working with complex diagrams. This allows to set precise measurements of a shape.

You can also change the angle of orientation of the shape and the pin position from which the measurements are to be considered. The Navigation pane is available only in the Office version of Visio. It basically lists all the elements of the diagram and makes it easy to navigate to each of them. This is especially useful if the diagram has varied shapes and you want to navigate to a specific shape type. Selecting the name of the shape in the Navigation pane selects it in the canvas.

It is easy to work with multiple windows or multiple versions of a document in Visio. You can switch between windows easily or arrange them side by side for a comparative look.

The options for window rearrangement can be found in the Window section of the View tab. New Window basically allows to create a new copy of the existing window. The new copy will not show the stencils directly, however, they can be selected by clicking the More Shapes arrow in the Shapes pane. The new window can be identified by the presence of a number in the title bar of the window.

In the following example, the original file name was BlkDiagm. Using the New Window command creates a new window with BlkDiagm: 2 in the title bar. This function allows you to arrange all windows side by side.

This feature is useful for comparing two windows, however, if you have a high-resolution display, you might be able to accommodate more windows beside each other. The Shapes pane and other panes can be minimized to allow more screen real estate.

This function allows cascading of windows to give an overall view of the open windows. The active window is in the foreground, while inactive windows are in the background with title bars visible. Cascade view is useful to know which documents are open at a glance.

The right side of the Print menu shows a preview of the output. You can change the orientation of the page, page size, and select only the pages that you need to print. Depending on your printer, you can also print in color or in greyscale.

Remember that printing in black and white might not produce a good output. Visio includes several ways to create a PDF of the drawing, which is extremely useful for sharing with others. You can save the drawing as a Visio drawing.

This opens the Save As dialog box. You might want to use this if you need to have fine grain control over the PDF document such as PDF version or compatibility properties. You can also directly email the diagram to a recipient. This creates a new email in your default email client with the PDF file readily attached.

Just enter the email address of the recipient to send the attachment. Exporting image formats is useful while sharing the drawing easily with others or to put it up on a web page.

To export a drawing, go to the File menu, click Save As and in the Save As type field, choose from the list of supported formats. You can choose from any of the abovementioned graphics formats. Once you choose a graphics format to export to, you will get some options to choose from depending on the capabilities of the graphic format. The options in the Operation and Color format fields are format specific. You can leave them mostly as default. Set the Background color as white if you have a background for the drawing.

Set the Quality as needed. You can also rotate the drawing or flip it horizontally or vertically. The resolution and size of the output diagram can be matched with the screen, printer, or source.

You can also input a custom resolution or size. Click OK. You can also export drawings to web pages which can be hosted on a web site. Visio allows customizing what goes into the web page. You can select which of the components of the diagram that you want to publish and the number of pages to publish. You can also provide a page title. The HTML file is created in the chosen location along with a folder containing the supporting files.

Both the HTML file and the folder are linked together. Adding SmartShapes automatically creates layers. Layers are basically overlays, which can be individually customized and turned on or off. Each shape and connector in the diagram forms a layer whose properties can be customized. To know the list of layers in the diagram, in the Editing section of the Home tab, click the Layers dropdown menu and click Layer Properties This opens the Layer Properties dialog box, which you can use to customize the different layers in the diagram.

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

Let us start by creating a new layer and then assign some shapes to the new layer. Go to the Layer Properties… dialog box in the Layers dropdown menu from the Editing section of the Home tab and click New… Type a name for the new layer.

The new layer will be created in the Layer Properties dialog box and will initially have zero shapes, as they are yet to be assigned. Shapes can be assigned to any layer. To assign a shape to a layer, click the shape or connector in the diagram and then, click Assign to Layer in the Layers dropdown menu from the Editing section of the Home tab. It opens the Layer dialog box from which a shape can be assigned to either an existing or a newly created layer.

Note that the New Layer that was created earlier is now in the list. A shape can be assigned to more than one layer as well. To assign a shape to all the layers in the document, click All and then click OK. The Layer Properties dialog box allows to change the properties of individual layers.

The Name field lists the type of layer, while the field lists the number of shapes in that type. In the following example, we see that there are nine equipment shapes in this diagram. There is a row of checkboxes for each layer type that can be selected or deselected. Unchecking the Visible checkbox makes the shape invisible in the drawing. If the Print checkbox is checked, the shape will be printed along with the others.

Unchecking the Print checkbox will not print the shapes in the layer. Similarly, layers can be made active or locked. Shapes in an active layer can be manipulated without affecting the other shapes or layers. When you lock a shape, Visio prevents any changes from happening to the shape.

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

This is useful if you want to differentiate a set of shapes from another. Themes and Styles are useful to give the diagram a design makeover and make it stand out. Visio provides a standard set of themes and styles, which are customizable. Themes apply to the entire diagram. Themes comprise of a set of colors and effects that generally blend well with each other. They are a great way to quickly give the diagram a polished look. Themes also affect other parts of the document such as titles, headings, text, etc.

To apply a theme, go to the Design tab and select a theme from the Themes section. The dropdown arrow provides more choices categorized by theme type. When you click a theme, all the aspects of the diagram and other parts of the document reflect the theme settings. A theme can have many variants, which can be selected from the Variants section of the Design tab. Styles are different from themes such that, they are applicable to a selected shape or a group of shapes. Styles help in customizing the aspects of a particular style.

To change a style of a shape, select the shape and from the Home tab, then select a style from the Shape Styles section. Style can be applied to both shape elements in the diagram as well as to individual text boxes. You can select multiple shapes to apply the style to all of them together.

When you change a theme after applying a style to a shape, the shape will take up the characteristics of the theme but will still remain distinct from other shapes. Of course, you can continue to customize the style even after applying a theme. Themes are useful to customize the appearance of the document. Visio goes a step further and allows to customize the themes themselves. Themes come with variants that can be further customized as needed.

Theme variants can be accessed from the Variants section in the Design tab. You can use the stock variants or click the dropdown menu to customize many other aspects. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to prevent themes from affecting one shape or a group of shapes, especially if they have important information that has to be presented in a particular way. To enable protection for a shape, click a shape or a group of shapes.

This opens the Protection dialog box that allows to select which components of the shape to protect from being overridden. We will focus on protecting the theming of the shape for now. So, select the checkboxes for Text, Format, From theme colors, From theme effects, From theme fonts and finally, From theme index. If you now select any theme from the Design tab, you will notice that the shape that is protected is unaffected by the theme change.

To reverse the changes, simply go to the Protection dialog box again, click None and finally click OK. Visio comes with a good selection of themes and variants to suit almost any need. However, sometimes you might have the need to create a specific color scheme that reflects your organization. To do this, select a theme from the Design tab and choose a variant from the Variants section that closely matches to what you intend to create.

In the New Theme Colors dialog box, give a name for the theme in the Name field. There are 5 accent colors to customize. Depending on the colors that you want to customize, choose a color for each accent. Click Apply to see a preview of the effect. Once you are satisfied with the color scheme, click OK to save the color scheme.

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

In the following series of chapters, we will learn different aspects of creating and working with org charts. The easiest way to get started is to use an inbuilt org chart template and build upon it.

In Visio , the org chart template can be found by going to the New menu. Click the Home button, click New and select the Templates tab. In the Templates tab, go to the Business category and click Organization Chart. It will open a dialog box in which you can choose the chart to be created in either Metric or US units.

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

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

The Executive Belt shape will not offer SmartShapes as this is a hierarchical chart with defined positions. To insert a manager, simply drag the Manager Belt shape onto the Executive Belt shape. You will notice that Visio automatically connects both the shapes.

You can add more Manager Belt shapes onto the Executive Belt shape and Visio will automatically connect, space, and align all the shapes. You can then enter details into the shapes by zooming in and double-clicking the shape to activate the text box. Unlike the Executive Belt shape, the manager shapes will offer the choice of using SmartShapes. We can continue building on the org chart previously created. Based on the organizational hierarchy, corresponding shapes can be added to the existing shapes.

Visio will then automatically create the connection and align the new shape in the diagram. A position belt is used to indicate a position under an executive. In the following example, several position belts have been added to each of the three manager sub-shapes.

To add a position shape, simply drag the Position Belt shape from the Shapes pane over any of the manager sub-shape. Visio automatically creates the Position Belt shape and connects it to the manager shape above.

In an organization, not all positions will be always full. There will be a few vacant positions that need to be filled. You can indicate a vacancy by dragging the Vacancy Belt shape onto any of the managerial shapes. A vacancy shape is different from the other shapes and can be easily identified.

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

Depending on the position of the shape in the drawing, moving left and right can also mean moving up and down. When you move a shape, all sub-shapes also move along with it. In the following example, the COO shape was moved to the right and with it, all positions below it also move.

A team frame helps to denote members of different teams who work on a common project. To add a team frame, drag the team frame shape from the Shapes pane onto the teams that you want to include. The team frame can be adjusted along its handles to accommodate as many members as needed. The team frame border line and the label can be formatted as needed. To format the team frame border, click the team frame and go to the Home tab and in the Shape Styles section, select the shape formatting needed.

A dotted line report helps in identifying individual team members who report to multiple people. To add a dotted line, drag the Dotted-line Report shape from the Shapes pane onto the canvas. You will see that there are two endpoints to the dotted line. Drag one of the endpoints to the first shape and the other endpoint to another shape to create a dotted line that indicates the team member reports to more than one position.

Although you can create individual shapes by dragging the desired shapes from the Shapes pane, Visio facilitates creating multiple shapes at one go. All shapes added together will be automatically connected and aligned. To create a three-position SmartShape, drag the Three Positions shape onto any of the higher manager shapes.

This creates three shapes directly below the higher shape. You will notice that the shapes can spill over onto the next page. Similar to a three-position SmartShape, Visio also helps to create a multi-position SmartShape in which you can select as many positions as you want.

To create a multiposition SmartShape, click and drag the Multiple shapes from the Shapes pane onto a selected shape on the canvas.

It opens an Add Multiple Shapes dialog box in which you can select the type of shapes and the number of shapes to be added. Click OK to add the shapes to the selected shape. You can add pictures to different levels in your org chart to make it more visually appealing. To add executive pictures, double-click the shape to zoom into it and then click the picture field within the shape. Then click the Insert button to select a picture for adding into a shape.

After adding an image, you can use the usual picture formatting tools to adjust the brightness and contrast or crop the image. If you want to automatically import executive pictures into their respective hierarchies, simply make sure the file names of the executive pictures match that of the names in the shapes. Synchronization allows any change made to the executives in other pages to remain in sync with the main page. This opens the Create Synchronized Copy dialog box, which allows to create a copy of the shape and its subordinates on a new or an existing page.

Click the Hide subordinates on original page checkbox, if you want to collapse the shape on the main page. Any changes made on the synchronized shape pages will be seen on the main page as well. Individual manager shapes can be collapsed and shown as needed.

Collapsing shapes is useful to reduce the clutter in the diagram. To collapse the hierarchy under a shape, right-click a shape, go to the Subordinates menu and click Hide Subordinates. The subordinate shapes then collapse under the manager shape. This is indicated by a tree icon under the manager shape. If the shapes are synchronized, any changes made to them elsewhere will be automatically reflected in the main shape. To reveal the subordinates again, right-click the manager shape, go to the Subordinates menu and click Show Subordinates.

Although you can manually create the org chart using different shapes in the Shapes pane, Visio also provides an automated way of importing information about your organization from an external source. In this chapter, we will look into importing data from information in an Excel spreadsheet.

Create an Excel spreadsheet or use an existing one containing some of the important information in the header row that goes into creating an org chart. Important information includes Employee, Title, Manager and Department. The Employee and Manager fields are mandatory and the others are optional. There are two ways of starting the Organization Chart wizard. The first method involves using the Organization Chart Wizard from the Templates section in the New menu. The other method is to use the Import command in the Organization Data section from the Org Chart tab in the Ribbon, if you have already created an org chart.

The second method is recommended if you need the background formatting to carry over onto all the pages in the org chart. The first method creates all the pages required, but you need to individually format each page, which can get tedious if your organization is large. Either ways, the Organization Chart Wizard appears in which you can specify the features of your org chart. The first screen of the Organization Chart Wizard gives the option of either selecting the existing information from a file or manually entering information.

For this example, we will choose the first option. Click Next to proceed to the next screen in the wizard. In the following screen, you can choose the source in which the organizational information is stored. Select the second option and click Next. In this screen, in the Name field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that contains the name of the employee. In the Reports to field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that denotes the reporting manager.

If the name and first names are in different fields, specify the field containing the first name of the employee in the First name dropdown. Visio will combine the name and first name fields to generate the full name of the employee. Click Next to continue. The Data File Columns box lists all the data fields that are present in the header of the Excel file.

You can select the fields that you need to be displayed in the Displayed Fields section by selecting the required fields and then click Add. Click Next, once the desired fields are added. In the next screen, you can choose the fields the shape data should be based on. The shape data fields will be similar to the fields selected in the previous step so in most cases, you can leave it as such. You can also add any additional fields if needed. In the following screen, you can choose to include pictures of the employees.

If you have labelled pictures in the same format as the employee names, you can point to the location of the folder containing pictures of all the employees.

Or you can simply choose not to include any pictures. In this screen, you can choose how much of organization info can be displayed on one page, if there are many employees spanning many pages. You can also choose to allow Visio to automatically break the org chart across pages.

Make sure that Hyperlink employee shapes across pages and Synchronize employee shapes across pages are selected. Click Finish to finally create the org chart. After clicking Finish, Visio will start processing information from the Excel spreadsheet and create the org chart based on the parameters specified in the wizard.

You will see a progress indicator showing the status of the creation. The completed org chart can be saved as a PDF or any of the image formats by going to the File menu and clicking Save As. Select from any of the file types in the Save As type field. If you save the drawing as a JPG or GIF file, you will get another dialog box, which allows to further specify the output options.

A brainstorming diagram is similar to an org chart but is used more to convey different ideas about a topic. To create a brainstorming diagram, click File and go to the New menu. In the Templates section, select Business, and then in the list of templates, select Brainstorming Diagram, choose the desired units to work with and click Create. You will notice that the brainstorming diagram document is created and ready to use.

This has a few notable differences compared to the org chart. Firstly, the number of shapes are lesser than an org chart. Secondly, there is an Outline Window that appears in the drawing showing the outline of the diagram. Thirdly, there is a Brainstorming tab added to the ribbon, which contains tools required to use the brainstorming diagram.

To create the central topic for the brainstorming diagram, drag the Main topic shape onto the canvas. Unlike the org chart where you had to double-click the shape to enter text, you can start typing text in a brainstorming diagram as soon as you drag the shape onto the canvas. In this chapter, we will learn how to add, edit and place subtopics in the brainstorming diagram using Visio. In a brainstorming diagram, sub-shapes are not directly inserted on top of the main shape.

A sub-shape is inserted as a subtopic. To insert a subtopic, first click the Main topic shape and then click the Brainstorming tab on the Ribbon. In the Add Topics section, click Subtopic. You can also create multiple subtopics at once by clicking the Multiple Subtopics in the Add Topics section. This opens the Add Multiple Topics dialog box, where you can enter the names of each of the subtopics. Subtopics can be edited simply by clicking the title of the subtopic and typing over it.

You can also edit a subtopic by clicking its name twice in the Outline Window. The Outline Window represents the topic hierarchy of the brainstorm. The subtopics can be dragged by their connectors and placed anywhere on the canvas. They will always be linked to the Main topic shape. The Outline Window makes it easy to edit the order of topics or topic names in the diagram. Any changes made in the Outline Window will be readily reflected in the actual diagram.

The Outline Window can be pinned or unpinned by clicking on the push pin icon to the bottom left of the window. This enables the window to auto-hide when not in use. Topics can be edited by clicking twice on the topic name within the window and typing. The order of the topics can also be changed by clicking and dragging the topic from one subtopic into another.

You can also right-click a topic and Move Up or Move Down to change the order of the topics. To delete a topic, right-click a topic and then click Delete Topic or simply select a topic and press the Delete key on the keyboard. You can customize the brainstorming diagram in a similar manner to other types of diagrams by changing the shape, style, and layout. The shapes of individual topics can be customized into a variety of built-in shapes. Hold down the Shift key, select the topics one by none and in the Brainstorming tab, click Change Topic in the Arrange section.

This opens the Change Shape dialog box, which lists the shape types you can change to. Select a shape type and click OK. The brainstorming diagram can be customized by choosing different themes and theme variants.

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

You can also customize the style of the diagram so that it looks more elegant and professional. You can choose from a variety of brainstorming styles and also a couple of mosaic options, which includes a mix of all the styles. Select a style and click Apply to see the result. Click OK to close the dialog box.

You can also customize the layout by clicking Layout in the Brainstorming tab. Select a layout from the Select a layout section. You can also choose the type of connector in the Connectors section. Select a layout and click Apply to see the result. You can send brainstorming data directly to Word and Excel and in fact, to any program that accepts XML input. Any changes can be saved to this XML file, which can then be imported back into Visio. Note that these options are available, only if you have the versions of Word and Excel installed on your computer.

In Excel, the data is organized into topic levels. For example, T1 represents the main topic, T1. You can add or remove topic hierarchies here and save the XML file, which can then be reimported back into Visio. Similar to org charts and brainstorming diagrams, you can also create timelines in Visio to depict a schedule or a series of events. To create a timeline, go to the New menu in the File tab and click Templates.

Go to the Schedule category, click Timeline and then Create to create the timeline workspace. Since the timeline essentially measures time, units selection is inconsequential. Once the Timeline template is created, click and drag the Block timeline shape from the Shapes pane onto the canvas. This opens a Configure Timeline dialog box, where you can select the duration for the timeline and the Timescale. Click Ok. Milestones represent specific points in time during which an important event has occurred or is scheduled to occur.

To add a milestone, click and drag the Line Milestone shape onto a chosen interval on the timeline. It need not be dropped exactly on a specific interval, since you can manually configure the exact date and time of the event.

When you drag the milestone onto the timeline, the Configure Milestone dialog box appears, where you can specify the exact date and time of the milestone along with a description of the event.

You can also choose from the standard date formats to better represent the time and date. Click OK to create the milestone on the timeline. The milestone can be dragged along the timeline, and the date and time of the milestone will be updated accordingly. When adding many milestones, it is possible that the description text of the milestones will run into each other creating a messy look.

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

Once the yellow end is dragged and released, the Line milestone shape adjusts itself accordingly. You can also use the guides to glue the yellow ends of multiple milestones so that they are all aligned. An interval denotes a block of time over the course of which an event occurs or is scheduled. To add an interval, drag the Block interval shape onto a location on the timeline.

It opens the Configure Interval dialog box. In the Configure Interval dialog box, you can select the duration of the interval, the date format and add a description. Click OK to add the interval to the timeline. Intervals can overlap milestones or other events. By formatting the interval shape to make it transparent, any other shape behind it can be made visible. Markers and indicators can be used to denote specific events such as current date or elapsed time. Markers help to gain a perspective of where you currently stand with respect to your objectives in the current timeline.

You might want to adjust the yellow end to ensure that the marker text does not overlap with your milestone or other information. Another marker or indicator that can be useful is, Elapsed time. The Elapsed time indicator helps in gauging the time elapsed since the beginning of the timeline. It is indicated by a green rectangle along the duration of the elapsed time. Of course, just like any other shape, the color of the Elapsed time shape can be customized.

Expanded timelines are useful to get a zoomed in view of the finer aspects of a time period. For example, the expanded timeline can show many details of events in a particular period, which might not be visible on the main timeline. To create an expanded timeline, drag the Expanded timeline shape onto the main timeline. This opens the familiar Configure timeline dialog box in which you can specify the start and finish dates. Since this is an expanded timeline, you can choose a lower scale such as weeks instead of months if you have a packed agenda for the week.

The expanded timeline is connected to the main timeline by means of two dotted connectors with yellow ends. The yellow ends can be used to move or change the orientation of the expanded timeline. You can also add milestone events to the expanded timeline. However, any event or interval added to the expanded timeline will not show up in the main timeline. You can apply the usual formatting techniques, such as themes and variants to a timeline.

You can also select a background so that all successive timelines are created using the background template. You can also change the timeline and other shapes to make it look like a block, cylinder, or a bracket by right-clicking the shape and selecting the corresponding type from the menu. Visio also allows you to let others edit the drawing, if provided access.

This happens via Microsoft OneDrive and you need to be signed in to Visio to access this feature. To share a drawing for editing or review, go to the File menu and click Share. The document has to be first saved to the cloud, so click Save to Cloud to save the document to your personal or official OneDrive folder.

Once the document is saved to your OneDrive folder, you can invite others by sending them the link to the shared drawing. You can define whether people just get to view it or get to edit it as well.

Your collaborators can then open the shared drawing in the cloud and open the drawing directly in their Visio installation. They can open and review the drawing online in their browsers; however, any changes to the drawing itself requires the users to have a local copy of Visio installed.

You can create calendars in Visio to help you better organize and deliver information. To create a calendar, go to the New menu in the File tab and click Templates, then Schedule. In the Schedule category, click Multi week Task Calendar and then Create to create the calendar workspace. Depending on your version of Visio, you might just notice the template as Calendar. You will see that there is a default calendar created.

You can however, create your own calendar by dragging the Month shape onto an empty canvas. This opens the Configure dialog box, where you can specify the calendar month. Days of the month are automatically filled and the weekends are differentiated from the weekdays.

To add a single day appointment, click the Appointment shape in the Shapes pane and drag it on to a location in the calendar. This opens the Configure dialog box, where you can enter the details of the appointment. Click OK to add the appointment on the prescribed date. Sometimes, appointments can stretch over multiple days. To add a multi-day appointment, click and drag the Multi-day event shape from the Shapes pane onto the calendar. This again opens a Configure dialog box, where you can specify details of the event along with the start and end dates.

Once the multi-day appointment is created, you can drag the appointment handle to cover additional dates, if needed. Calendars can be customized just like any other Visio drawing by applying themes and variants. Calendars can also be customized to show weather conditions or even moon phases.

To add a shape such as weather icons, scroll down the list of shapes in the Shapes pane and drag the desired icon onto a date in the calendar. You can align multiple shapes using the dynamic grids that appear when you try to align shapes next to each other. You can also change the look and feel of the calendar by selecting themes and variants from the Design tab in the Ribbon. Adding additional months is simple in Visio. You can rename the page by double-clicking on the page title.

Once you add a new page, create a new calendar by clicking and dragging the Month shape onto the new page. Configure the calendar for the new month. To add additional months, simply create new pages by duplicating the current page. To duplicate a page, right-click the name of the page and click Duplicate. This creates duplicate of the current calendar page. Now, simply reconfigure the calendar on the new page by going to the Calendar menu on the Ribbon and clicking Configure.

When you change the month, you get a warning message that all scheduling information will be lost.