Chapter 3. Linking Data to Shapes

Microsoft introduced the current data-linking feature in the Professional edition of Visio Professional 2007. This feature is better than the database add-on that has been around since Visio 4 because it is has greater importing capabilities and is part of the core product, and it has its own API. This provides the Visio user with a simple method of surfacing data from a variety of data sources, and it gives the power user or developer the ability to create productivity enhancements in code.

Once data is imported into Visio, the rows of data can be linked to shapes and then displayed visually, or they can automatically create hyperlinks. Moreover, if the data is edited outside of Visio, then the data in the Visio shapes can be refreshed so that the shapes reflect the updated data. This can be done in the Visio client, but some data sources can also refresh the data in Visio documents that are displayed in SharePoint web pages.

In this way, Visio documents...

A very quick introduction to importing and linking data

Visio Professional 2016 added more buttons to the Data ribbon tab along with some new Data Graphics, but the functionality has basically been the same since Visio Professional 2007. The new additions, as seen in the following screenshot, can make this particular ribbon tab quite wide on the screen. Thank goodness that wide screens have become the norm!

The process to create data-refreshable shapes in Visio consists of simply carrying out the following steps:

1. Import data as recordsets.

2. Link rows of data to shapes.

3. Make the shapes display the data.

4. Use any hyperlinks that have been created automatically.

The Quick Import tool introduced in Visio Professional 2016 attempts to merge the first three steps into one, but it rarely gets it perfectly, and it is meant only for simple Excel data sources. Therefore, it is necessary to learn how to use the Custom Import feature properly.

Knowing when to use the Quick Import tool

The Data | External Data...

Creating data links to the shapes

Most of this chapter has dealt with importing data into the Visio document, and very little has been about actually linking the data to the shapes. More will be discussed in Chapter 9, Automating Structured Diagrams, but a few simple methods are introduced here. The beauty of having the Document.DataRecordsets available in code is that it provides a consistent method for automating any data links to shapes, regardless of the origin of the data.

Linking data to shapes manually

The Visio user interface presents several methods for linking data to shapes. The first is to just drag a row from the External Data window onto an existing shape. This will just add the data to the shape, which is the technique that has been used throughout this chapter.

There are times when it is impossible to drag the data row onto a shape, such as when the shape is a List or Container. Therefore, the method is to select the shape first, then the data row, and Link to Selected Shapes...

Summary

This chapter has gone through the many different sources for importing data into Visio and has shown how each can be done manually or with code. This was followed by examples of linking rows of this data to shapes on the drawing page (again, manually and in code).

The next chapter will go into more detail about displaying this data on the shapes using the Data Graphics feature, whether it be simple text, icons, data bars, or color by value.