remove shape protection

[wapperdude]

Regarding calendars -- VisioGuy did this nice variation for 2010.  It might be easily adaptable for 2011, I haven't tried yet.

http://www.visguy.com/2009/12/29/visio-2010-calendar-template/

HTH
Enjoy!
Wapperdude

[linerate]

Good tip and thanks for the explanation as well!
Your answer is still helping others after all this time.

The problem is with selecting all shapes.  Visio decides which is the 1st shape selected and then adds the other shapes to the selection group.  If the 1st chosen has no protection issues, then, it would appear that none of the selections have any problems.  Obviously, that isn't necessarily true.

One work around would be to 1st apply all protections to the selection, and then apply no protections.  This will remove any and all protections from the selected group.  You are now free to move about the drawing.

Wapperdude

[vojo]

BTW....same problem with groups and subshapes

select "remove all protections" for group leaves subshapes as they were originally

[SteveC]

After stumbling with this same issue, a work-around I found was to 1) select the set of shapes, 2) group the objects, 3) then delete the group.

[Jennifer]

The problem is with selecting all shapes.  Visio decides which is the 1st shape selected and then adds the other shapes to the selection group.  If the 1st chosen has no protection issues, then, it would appear that none of the selections have any problems.  Obviously, that isn't necessarily true.

One work around would be to 1st apply all protections to the selection, and then apply no protections.  This will remove any and all protections from the selected group.  You are now free to move about the drawing.

Wapperdude

Wapperdude,

You are a genius and a life-saver. I have a fairly complex drawing I created myself. My fat fingers kept moving objects I didn't mean to, causing a lot of extra work, some of which I didn't notice until later. I got the bright idea to lock each shape once I got it the way I wanted it. This actually worked fairly well until I wanted to move the whole drawing over a bit to make room some something else. I tried select all shapes and setting all protections off. It didn't work as the OP discovered. So I was left to select each shape individually, a very tedious process.

Finally, I got fed up and searched for a cure. Google, bless it's black corporate heart, found this thread. Your solution worked perfectly.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

PS: Judging by the number of views of this thread (93,120), you have saved a lot of people a lot of trouble. That's almost 54 views/day since the original post (11/30/10) -- 1,727 days. Amazing.

PPS: And I am appalled at the stupidity of the Microsoft developers. I know I shouldn't be after all these years suffering through the countless bugs and glitches in Word, Excel, Outlook, VBA, etc. What moron thought this was a good implementation?

[wapperdude]

Thanks, Jennifer.  Funny, never really thought about long term implications, nor considered that this might be a wide spread problem.  Whoda thought!   

[Jennifer]

Thanks, Jennifer.  Funny, never really thought about long term implications, nor considered that this might be a wide spread problem.  Whoda thought!   

Well, you saved me at least an hour of locking and unlocking shapes one at a time -- not to mention the toll on my nervous system from all the cursing and the broken glassware hurled against the wall. At one point, I was considering throwing the computer out the window. 

[wapperdude]

 

[locrian]

Another option I tried in my Microsoft Visio Standard 2013 was: File > Options > Advanced (General Section) > Check "Run in Developer Mode".  When you'll get a "DEVELOPER" tab on the Visio main window, select the shape that you want to delete, then inside the "DEVELOPER" tab, there is an "operations" drop down.  Click the "fragment" option.  Then try to delete the shape.  It worked for me.  I had tried to uncheck Protect "From deletion" when you're in the "Protection" option inside the "DEVELOPER" tab, and also tried to check/uncheck to try and trick the option, but no luck with that.

[sychik]

You can recursively unprotect all the shapes in group:

Code Select Expand


Sub UnprotectSelection()
    Dim i As Long
    For i = 1 To Application.ActiveWindow.Selection.Count
        RecursiveUnprotection Application.ActiveWindow.Selection(i)
    Next
End Sub

Sub RecursiveUnprotection(grp As Shape)
    Dim i As Integer
    For i = 0 To 19 ' grp.Section(visSectionObject).Row(visRowLock).count
        grp.Section(visSectionObject).Row(visRowLock).Cell(i).Formula = 0
    Next i
    If grp.Type = visTypeGroup Then
        Dim shp As Shape
        For Each shp In grp.Shapes
            RecursiveUnprotection shp
        Next shp
    End If
End Sub