The Service Pack 3 (SP3) update for Visio 2007 is now available. It includes a variety of new security, stability and performance improvements as well as all previous updates and hotfixes released through August 2011. The SP releases are cumulative, so it is not necessary to apply any earlier service pack releases to get all previous updates. A number of issues that have been addressed in previous hotfixes are included in this SP. The most significant of these are: Corrected an issue that caused...

A new series of training videos have been posted on Office.com to introduce Visio users to Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). The videos are packaged as a course named BPMN Diagramming Basics . The course provides both an introduction to the BPMN notation and a tutorial on creating BPMN diagrams with Visio 2010 Premium. Along the way you can see some of the other new features of Visio 2010 including Swimlanes , AutoConnect , Subprocesses , and Diagram Validation . The complete course takes...

In a previous blog post , we told you about the new Connectivity APIs in Visio 2010 that make it easier for developers to create and to move across a connected diagram. We’ve shown you how to use some of the new APIs to create new connected shapes ( see here ); now we’ll examine techniques for traversing connected diagrams. One of the most useful APIs for analyzing a connected diagram is the Shape.ConnectedShapes method, which allows you to get a reference to the shapes connected to a...

Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of Service Pack 1 for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 . This wave of releases includes updates to Visio 2010 and the Visio Viewer. Here are the links for downloading: Visio 2010 SP1 32-bit 64-bit Visio Viewer 2010 SP1 32-bit 64-bit There are a couple noteworthy improvements in Visio 2010 SP1:The updates to Visio 2010 include stability, security, and performance improvements. SP1 includes the Cumulative Updates and Public Updates to Visio since RTM a...

Visio has published the XML Schema Definition (XSD) files for the Microsoft Visio 2010 XML Drawing (.vdx) format. This schema is also known as DatadiagramML. The .XSD files allow developers to better understand the structure of Visio XML documents and design solutions that work with the .VDX file format. The DatadiagramML Schema for Visio 2010 consists of three .XSD files: visio.xsd is the core schema used by Visio 2003 and later visio12.xsd is the set of extensions used by Visio 2007 and later visio14...

The video below shows how to add a Data Graphic legend to a drawing using C# code. How might you use this code within the context of constructing diagrams with Data Graphics? As mentioned in a previous blog post , Visio Professional 2010 and Visio Premium 2010 use container shapes to create legends for data graphics. Along with this new feature, the Visio 2010 Object Model includes new APIs that allow you to manipulate container shapes programmatically – including the Page.DropLegend method...

Spring has arrived and baseball season is upon us! Whether you follow the professional leagues, play recreationally or coach in the little leagues, there is one thread that ties all baseball enthusiasts together – a passion for stats. In this article and the attached diagram, we present a baseball scoring sheet that you can use to track the action in each game. You can use the diagram as-is or customize it to your liking. Print and Go The Visio Baseball Scorecard is intended to be printed and...

One of the things we all do a lot is reuse shapes or groups of shapes in several places and often the best way to do that is to Copy the existing shape and Paste it elsewhere. Even though you use it daily, there may be some behavior you’re not familiar with, especially with the Copy/Paste improvements in Visio 2010. So, here is a brief summary... Where to find it Copy and Paste is available in more than one way. Depending on your normal workflow and the result you want, you may want to use...

March Madness is about to start, so here’s a Visio diagram to let you quickly fill out and share your bracket! Download the diagram here, and with a few clicks you can have a complete professional looking bracket that you can easily share with others. This diagram was originally created by Visio MVP Chris Roth, who runs the Visio Guy blog. The bracket has the first 64 teams already filled out. All you need to do is select the winners. You can fill out the bracket using Visio in one of the following...

In this post, we describe a great way to get help with Visio: the Visio and SharePoint 2010 forums. Microsoft employees, Visio MVPs and other experts monitor these forums and answer questions. This is an excellent way to pose a question to a large audience of Visio experts. There are two Visio and a number of SharePoint forums where you can post questions: Visio Answers forum Visio MSDN forum SharePoint 2010 forum Each one is targeted at a different audience. We explain these forums in more detail...