We on the Visio product team receive lots of interesting questions from Visio users through our blog’s contact form. In this post, we’ll share our answers to several questions that we thought would be of interest to our blog readers.

Q: I installed Visio 2010, but the BPMN shapes appear to be missing. Where can I find them?

A: The BPMN shapes are part of Visio Premium 2010. You can check what edition you have by going to File > Help and looking in the top right.

Here is a link to the feature set for each Visio edition:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visio/archive/2010/04/09/visio-2010-editions.aspx

 

Q: If I add hyperlinks to my Visio drawing, will they still work after using Visio Web Access to display them on a SharePoint page?

A: Yes, hyperlinks will work in the Visio Web Part. Here are some more details:

  • You can hyperlink to web URLs as well as other Visio pages in the document.
  • If you have multiple hyperlinks on a shape, clicking on the shape will open the topmost link or the “Default” link.
  • Pressing Ctrl and clicking on a shape will open the Shape Data pane and select the shape. This will show you all the hyperlinks, and you can click each one.

 

Q: I upgraded to Visio 2010 and am having difficulty finding the Shape Operations (Union, Combine, Fragment, Intersect, Subtract, Join, Trim, and Offset). Where are they?

A: In Visio 2010, Shape Operations have been moved to the Developer tab of the Ribbon, which you can enable by turning on Developer mode in Visio Options:

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Once this is done, click on “Operations” in the Developer Tab to get the menu of operations:

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Q: I am creating a Visio 2010 Cross-Functional Flowchart. How can I select an individual band to specify its color fill?

A: The easiest way to select a band (also called swimlane) is to click on its text heading, so that you see a dotted outline around the swimlane. You can then choose a fill color, and that will apply to the heading portion of the band, as follows:

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To apply the fill to the body of the swimlane, go to the Cross-Functional Flowchart tab in the Ribbon and select a style in the Style gallery that has a fill:

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This lets you color the whole swimlane as follows:

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Q: Where can I get support for Visio or report a problem?

A: The central support place for Visio is the Visio Solution Center.  It allows you to get product information, get self-support or community support, or contact a support representative.

If you simply want to report a problem, you can choose one of the community support options such as the forums or our contact form. If you want help finding a resolution, you should choose the forums or contact a support representative.