updating shapes (timeline?) from excel to show progress on a project

[miles_hot]

I produce a visio a3 representation of our programme - various gropups of projects and workstreams down the side, time line along the top.  I pick out a set of tasks and milestones from MS Project plans to display, colour code them and show critical links and points of interest in the project.

At the moment I have a very manual way - aligning with a time scale (days) which gets hidden before printning - to eansure that they all line up correctly.

I have read around and stumbled across both shape sheets and the ability to export the timeline data however I don't seem to be able to make the next step!

In my mind I have a sitaution where there is an excel sheet which contains some reference for each object in visio and against this there is various data, most of which I would not change, however I would be able to change a value to move the box around in the horizontal direction.  This change would be driven by an extract of the MS Project plan.

I could potentially have multiple timelines or maybe there is a way of having a timeline which stretches from the top to the bottom of the page but the bars and milestones on it are set to 4mm high and are set at a specific height up (or down) the timeline to give the spacing between workstreams.

I can't see how to get specific information into a specific shape sheet cell from outside VISIO (i.e. excel)
I can't see how to import information (which has been exported from Visio) back into Visio with changes applied to it.

I have a horrible feeling that this is impossible however there is enough "nearly there" feel to this that it is possible that it is just my ignorance which is stoping this working.

Can you help?

Miles
PS A gantt chart will not work as I often have three or four bars on the same line

[aledlund]

to start with are you using v2007 professional, or later?
al

[miles_hot]

to start with are you using v2007 professional, or later?
al

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you!  I am using 2003 and if it can be done in this that would be ideal however it is just possible that I could make a case for the use of 2007 etc but 2003 would  be a lower stress appraoch

Miles