Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Those of you who follow this column know that I have some favorites in the Office family. I certainly favor PowerPoint and I have sung the praises of OneNote, but for unsung heroes I believe Visio is the most underappreciated program in the suite.

I covered some of the new features of Visio 2007 in an earlier update, and also discussed the online resource for IT pro specifically for Visio — the IT Toolbox.

But how do you get up and running with Visio if you've never used it? Perhaps you appreciate its potential for your enterprise but you want to get well grounded in the product.

While you can certainly play around with the templates or take tutorials on the Office web site, probably the one resource you will want to consider is Steven Holzner's Using Microsoft Visio 2007 Special Edition, billed as the only Visio 2007 book you will ever need. (Safari link)

While you might be reluctant to get into a 652 page opus, I would submit that Visio is a tool you don't want to dabble with and you really need to learn it from the ground up.

What's also nice about Holzer's book is that if you've used previous versions, he goes over the new features right up front, and also includes a clear explanations of the various versions; which features are window dressing and which impact security, and perhaps most impressive, how running the product on Vista contrasts to using it in Windows XP.

Once you get beyond the basics of templates, shapes and stencils, Holzner goes into some depth concerning some of the more important aspects of Visio, like the ShapeSheet.

Very usefully he points out how to access a well hidden area of Visio Help devoted entirely to ShapeSheet References.

Figure 1483

This is something I would have found quite helpful in previous versions where I had to delve into developer textbooks to get and figure out some of this information.

(As we covered in an update, the ShapeSheet is a spreadsheet that controls every aspect of a diagram, or a selected shape — it can also be programmed using macros or VBA code).

While Holzner doesn't get into actual development (the book is long enough as it is) he also covers the Visio Macro Recorder in some detail as well as outlining Visio's predefined macros.

Figure 1484

One thing older users may find a bit confusing and it's no fault of Holzner is that Custom Properties are now apparently simply referred to as Shape Data, and as a function of creating reports that's where they are covered in this text.

You can access a shape's properties by opening the Shape Data Window.

Figure 1485

My sense is that this book is a great overview of Visio 2007's features and works particularly well as a reference once you kind of get your feet wet, because it's well indexed and it's easy to find the specific tasks you want to perform.

Most of the rest of the book goes into significant detail about what Visio does best — provide a graphical overview of complex information and in many cases tie it to an underlying database.

A Visio database can be within the diagram itself (Shape Data) or tied to Excel spreadsheet, Access table or any other compliant data format. Visio macros automate these connections and as Holzner describes, macros can be easily recorded in Visio 2007.

The beauty of recording macros is that if you get into the power of VBA you can quickly generate code using the recorder and copy and paste it into other subroutines.

Another important aspect of working with Visio not often mastered by the neophyte is work flow. Holzner goes into great detail in going over the uses of stencils and templates which can be tricky for new users.

Holzner covers creating your own stencils which is a very valuable work flow and customization practice. He also discusses how to use Visio data online, saving as a web page, and working with a SharePoint work space.

I wanted this book for myself because I love Visio, but it is a very dense program. I wanted a reference book that covered both the newer features of the 2007 version and also gave me an in-depth overview of aspects of the program I am likely to forget over time if I don't work with the program regularly.

Holzner goes through the very basics like choosing a Pointer all the way to everything short of programming very efficiently. The book is well illustrated and if anything is lacking it might be a project folder on CD or a web site with supplemental materials. But there is a treasure trove of Visio material already available online – what most users need is a comprehensive reference work that can take them through the major steps of the various tasks with a minimum of fuss and confusion. I believe this book does that very well.

If you want to supplement your work with this book check out Chris Roth's (Visio guru) web site.

InformIT Articles and Sample Chapters

Using a Visio Timeline in PowerPoint (Part 1)

Using a Visio Timeline Diagram in PowerPoint (Part2)

Books and eBooks

Steven Holzner's Using Microsoft Visio 2007 Special Edition

If you're impatient and willing to work with an earlier version, you might enjoy The 10 Minute Guide to Visio 2002 by Eric Infanti.

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