hi... using visio 2013... my project is to create a timeline, and show the different important dates for town government that occur each year. i have successfully linked excel data to milestone shapes on my timeline, which are different dates depending on the year. what i haven't been able to figure out is how to automatically have the timeline start 3 days before the first event, and end 3 days after the last event. when i change from 2019, to 2020, for example, all the dates are re-computed in excel, and imported to visio, but i have to manually reset the timeline start/stop dates. any thoughts?
Just a thought... add entries into your Excel file. One for start and one for stop times. Let Excel calculate each, and link the Visio start / stop entries to these cells.
been trying that.... the timeline has 2 dates as you know, start and stop. i can link the start date to it, and that works. if i then try to link the stop date to it, it says the timeline already a linked data element, and wants to know if i want to replace it. so, the question seems to be how to link 2 data elements to a single object that requires 2.
Can you upload an example? I'm not seeing that error.
Did simple test, using a 2nd shape to add begin / end times. See attached.
here is the excel file, and the visio file. on the excel file, the data is on the 'summary' sheet. all the triangle milestone dates are successfully linked. the start/end dates of the timelines are manually entered.
on the visio file, there are 2 timelines. i am trying to define the start/end dates for both, from the summary spreadsheet. when i link a start date, that works. but when i subsequently link the end date, i get the error "one or more of the shapes are already linked to a row in the same data source."
so, the visio looks great now, for 2019. when i change the year (on the summary sheet of the excel file, yellow highlighted cell), and refresh the data on the visio, all the milestone dates update, but the timeline must have the start/end dates manually adjusted. this is what i would like to be automated.