Floor Plan Color Link Data to Shapes

[Nunzy83]

Hello all,
I am new to Visio so pardon if this was already addressed but I searched around and could not find an answer.
I have created a floor plan with shapes, desks, seats etc. and placed a text of each cube number next to these shapes.
So I just discovered that I can link these shapes to external data to show the names of the ppl and other information which has been great.
No I was wondering if there was a way to color coordinate the data to the shapes. Say on my data I have a cube that is vacant I want it to be green and people under Team A to be blue etc. So that I can just edit the data on the excel and then the floor plan automatically updates. Is this doable?
I tried playing around and creating a New Data Graphic, New Item, Color by Value but that failed. I grouped the shape to the text of the cube number wondering if that was the issue but that didn't make a difference.
Any help would be appreciated.

[aledlund]

you can use color by value to highlight shapes based upon data, but the data has to be in the objects shapedata. when you linked your shapes to external data was their group included in the linked data? you might check out sessions eight and nine
http://visio.microsoft.com/en-us/Get_Started/How_To/Learn_Visio_2010_from_Visio_MVPs/Pages/default.aspx

al

[Nunzy83]

Hi Al,

Thanks for the link. Although I am using 2007 it was a a great help as it showed a lot of tips.

Unfortunately, I am still having problems.

1. When linking my data from an Excel, I have some Seat # that are alphanumeric in the form of eg. 1234A or 5678B that would not carry over to Visio. It would carry over all other information in the rows but that field containing for eg. 1234A would just  be blank. I tried putting these cells in text format ="1234A" but it still didn't work. Those that are 1234 come up fine.

2. After linking the data to shapes, and the external data window comes up I ran the Automatically Link function, all shapes on this page, then select the column of Seat # from my excel and then equals Shape Text. Side note, I have a floor plan with Shape Text which includes the Seat # labeling each desk. So then all the link symbols shows on the side of the External Data. But then when I run Color by Value, it does not pick up anything. It only colors when I drag each data from the External Data to that desk manually.

3. When applying the Color by Value items I have, if Vacant = Green and then another item line if Manager Name X =  Yellow. Each of those items work separately. But however if say there is a seat that is both Vacant and Manger Name X, no color gets populated neither the Green or the Yellow. I tried changing the ranking but nothing happened still.

Sorry I know this is kindly lengthy but again your help is appreciated! I been trying to figure this out all day and it just drove me crazy.

[aledlund]

what you may be running into is that even though Excel (should have) been defined as text, your worksheets initial rows may in fact be numeric rather than alphanumeric. The reason this can cause problems is that when importing from Excel Visio attempts to identify the field type by reading the first several rows of data and if it doesn't fined any alphabetic characters it will assign the field/column as numeric.
Color by value can only be assigned against one field in a shape.
al

[Nunzy83]

So how do I solve that?

Move them to the top of the list?

[aledlund]

I'd probably just put a dummy record in the first row with the appropriate field as alpha (a record that you do not intend to link).
al

[Nunzy83]

Sorry Al. I am still having problems with this floor plan.

So linked data from an excel to the floor plan. Now each desk has a text box with the desk number by it. So I realize the data I have linked is linking just to that text box and not the desk shape its self. This is the reason why the Color by value and data bar options are not working.

How can I link the desk Shape and the desk number? They only way is dragging the link from the external window to the desk shape. Any quicker way?

[Nunzy83]

nm I figured it out. I didn't create this plan from scratch and noticed that the text boxes were actually placed separately and not just written on the shape it self. Just need to re-write the #'s on each shape and delete those text boxes.