One of the long time requests for the Visio timeline is to support something other than standard dates and times, items that are not related to the standard concept of time.
This can be accomplished by NOT using date formats in the shapes. Each shape is grouped and has a top level shape that contains a User Property (or two) of the form User.xxxMask that contains the format to be used for the dates or times. This is controlled by the Timeline menu, but the format can be changed to use something more generic.
Dates are internally represented by a floating point number with the decimal portion representing the time of day. So to get a generic numeric date, the format has to be changed so the “date” is displayed as a number. This can be done by editing each shape OR editing the masters on the stencil. Of course, the standard caveat applies. Backup the masters! A better solution is to create a copy of the stencil and apply the modifications to it.
So modify the masters so the User.xxxMask cells contain “n” rather than {{M/d/yyyy}}.
John Marshall… Visio MVP Visio.MVPs.org
john Visio MVP 