Visio 2013: Containers with data graphics assigned to grouped lines

[sab4int]

Hello,

I am confronted with a very special strange reaction of containers in Visio 2013:
- I draw two parallel lines and group them
- then I assign a data graphic to the group, it works well
- then I put the group into a container
- when I now resize the container via the handles or invoke the command "Fit to Contents" the lower left corner of the container moves to the lower left corner of the page and gets locked there. The upper right corner of the container fits to the contents and remains resizeable.

When I do the same procedure with grouped rectangles instead of grouped lines everything works fine and also the lower left corner of the container fits to the group of rectangles.

Is this a bug or do I something wrong?

[Yacine]

Yes this is a bug. Sometimes visio interprets coordinates of grouped shapes as relative to the page instead of the group.
Try the following: Edit the group (menu edit - edit group "your group") cut the faulty shape and paste it back again. hth, Y.

[aledlund]

That's also a design problem with how MS implemented containers. When dropping shapes into a container it uses absolute (i.e. page) references rather than relative to the parent. To make matters worse if you move the container programmatically the embedded objects are not  updated, so they get left behind.
Al

[sab4int]

Very many thanks for the info. The strange thing is that the container only behaves this way when a data graphic is assigned to the group of lines.

However, due to the fact that this problem only shows up when grouping lines (= 1D - objects) I tried to convert all lines to 2D - objects before grouping them and the problem is gone. Nevertheless, it is a bug.

Regards, St.

[Visisthebest]

Visio 2021 and still running in to the same bug!

The lower left corner is page position 0,0. It seems like Visio runs in to an error calculating the surface area of the shape and all its subshapes and ends up setting 0,0 and the lower corner position of the container, when there is a 1D connector in the group.

The problem with using just a line instead of a connector is a visual issue, connectors and lines render differently and do not properly align at some zoom levels, creating an ugly rendering. (we use Visio because its diagram rendering is so pretty after all!)

I can solve it with a workaround fortunately, just bypassing both bugs completely. But it would be much better if I could keep 1D connectors in the group, the workaround is not quite ideal.