I have been analyzing a Visio feature in some of the shapes implemented through the shapesheets to understand what is going on and provide guidance for anyone who wants to implement the feature on other shapes. (Sorry Dave no pictures.)
The feature involve the User and Shape Data sections, some lists, lookups and nested IFs. To get a handle on what is going on, I needed to take snapshots of those sections under various conditions. Unfortunately the information is spread out so screen shots would be time consuming (Visio should have a sort feature in the ShapeSheet section(or at least a moveup/down for the rows)). Luckily The Developer section in Visio has a Print ShapeSheet that is easy to use.
The process is to open the ShapeData window, select the desired shape and select Print ShapeSheet, select selected shape(s) as the source and the clipboard as the target. Then open (my other favourite Visio add-on,) Excel and paste the clipboard content in A1. Put column C(Formulas) between column A and B. Remember, Excel LOVES to play with numbers, so before starting, set all the cells to text.
Go back to Visio and chose the next drop down item from the Shape Data for the next permutation and do another Print ShapeSheet to clipboard and place the contents in D1. You can delete column D and F because they are repeats of columns A and B, leaving the Values column. Repeat for other permutations of the ShapeSheet lists or settings to add more columns. Once done, you can do a cleanup of the unnecessary rows, like *.prompt that say No Formula, Sort, LangId, Calendar or rows not relevant to the analysis. If you want, you can transpose the spreadsheet so the values are columns rather than rows. You may be lucky and end up with something that is printable, mine printed on two pages.
Now back to the analysis, so I can blog about that feature.
John… Visio MVP in x-aisle
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john Visio MVP 