Step angle on connector lines, Font on text boxes?

[visio_user]

Hi,

I have a couple of quick questions -
I'm a very basic user, use visio to create block diagrams. Never used code on visio but am familiar with VB and Macros, so can use it if the solution needs me to.

I have a lot of text boxes on my sheet, unfortunately edited by a lot of people who didn't maintain the same font and size. Is there a way to change this for all the text boxes in one shot? I tried Edit - Select by Type but that didn't limit the selection to text boxes. Right clicking on one text box -> Shape -> Find Similar Shapes is grayed out.

Other question is, is there a way to limit step angle of the connector lines? I am finding it very tedious to have to manually straighten every line by setting angle to to 0 or 90 in the Size and Position window. Everytime I draw a line, I end up getting slanted lines with angles like 0.04516, 91.02 etc

Thanks!

[wapperdude]

There is no "Easy Button" that will allow you to select only text boxes -- at least, not that I'm aware of.  You might be able to do it with VBA.  I believe a textbox has no master, so you might be able to use that as a search criteria.

As far as drawing the connector lines go, hold the shift key down as you drag, it will keep your lines from wandering and sagging.  See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa200952(office.10).aspx

Wapperdude

[vojo]

why not do the following:

Select all boxes
Group them
change font size
ungroup them

should take less than 15 secs to do....so yes not a single button...but not difficult either.

In the future, you can prevent changes in font size if you want...or...have font scale with size of box.
this is more involved (cant do a simple sequence to accomplish)....but if you get in front of this, over time, you wont have to clean up after others.

[Visio Guy]

When drawing lines, you can hold down the Shift key to constrain the lines to multiples of 45 deg and 90 deg.

[Aeon]

you won't be able to have them snap while holding shift though, keep that in mind

[Visio Guy]

While I am drawing a line, I get snapping to the grid and to geometry, even while holding down the Shift key.

But go back and adjust that line by pulling on one of the green, "1D" handles, and Shift does indeed kill any snapping. This is a bit silly and I should probably send a bug to MS...

[Yacine]

Play with the snap & glue options and make sure you turn it on.

[wapperdude]

Holding the shift key while drawing the line does not prevent snapping or gluing, for that matter.

But, the point of holding the shift key is to constrain how the line is drawn.  So, if you try to go to some place that is not within the context of constrained line, it won't go there!!!  But, wasn't that the point to begin with???

[Visio Guy]

I run into the case very frequently where I want to constrain a line to be horizontal or vertical (ie: SHIFT!), but I want to snap to a grid-line or an intersection with another line along the way.

Again, this seems to work while drawing the line, but not when re-adjusting the line after it is drawn, unless I need to revisit the snap & glue settings as Yacine suggested.

I think it is not clear which settings apply to which modes. There are a lot of subtleties when you are drawing in Visio that aren't always noticed or discussed. For instance, you could be:

• Drawing a line or shape
• Resizing a shape using the green handles (now blue in Visio 2010)
• Repositioning a shape (ie: moving it!)
• Moving a vertex of a shape
• Rotating a shape (not much snapping available here)

It is not always clear which snap-settings will apply to which mode.

[wapperdude]

I'm not sure that I understand "adjust" after drawing.   

With snap and glueing to shape geometry turned on, I did the following.  Drew an arbitrary line (vertical).  Then from somewhere off to the left of that line, started a new line, with the shift key down, and stopped on the 1st line.  Snapped and glued. 

Then, started a third line, again from somewhere left of the 1st, holding the shift key down, drew the line, but stopped short of the 1st line.  So, I have this nice horizontal, floating line, not connected to any thing.  I then selected the line dragged it so the end point was on the 1st line, but not where the 2nd line is connected.  The 3rd line is now glued to the 1st.

Did the same with a forth line, stopping short.  This time, with the line tool, clicked on the end point to move the end and dragged it off at an arbitrary angle.  Still glues to the vertical line.  Note, the forth line is still just one segment.

Did the same with a fifth line.  This time, I just released the shift key, and drew another segment rather than extending the end.  This time, it did not glue.  You can see by the green end diamond, that it didn't glue.  But it did snap onto the vertical line.  I guess that's what you mean by "adjusting" the line?  I can see where that method would be fairly common thing to do.  But, once you add a segment, then isn't it true that Visio doesn't treat this as a 1D shape, but rather as a 2D shape?


Take the last case, but don't use the shift key.  You get the same result, no gluing. 

Wapperdude

[visio_user]

Thanks all, I will try using shift for the lines.

Visio_guy is right though, the scope (i.e. what they apply to) of the snap and glue settings is not evident to me. I will have to spend more time on this.
   

why not do the following:
Select all boxes
Group them
change font size
ungroup them
should take less than 15 secs to do....so yes not a single button...but not difficult either.

'Select all boxes' is where I have difficulty in my case because there are 100s of them spread all over the page. There's various other groups here and there that some of them belong to. If there's a programmatic way to do this, it would be easier.

[vojo]

fonts have no notion of groups and such.

You can have a group in a group in a group in a group.....select outer most group, change fonts....and all fonts changed

for 100s of shapes....zoom to like 10%....select all...change font