Which programming language should you use with Visio?
Microsoft Visio comes with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) built into it, which is a very useful interface for exploring the object model, and testing out ideas. In addition, Visio has a macro recorder that can provide a quick and dirty way of exploring how some of the actions are performed. However, the resultant code from the macro recorder can be very verbose in parts, and completely miss out some bits because Visio is running code inside one of the many Add-ons or COM add-ins that may be installed.
If you want to use VBA then you will need to run Visio in Developer Mode by checking the option available from the Visio Options dialog (use File | Options to display this), in the Advanced group.
![](https://static.packt-cdn.com/products/9781849680141/graphics/0141_02_02.jpg)
Developer Mode will also add some features to other parts of the Visio interface, such as additional options on the right-mouse menu when a page and shape is selected.