Create Custom Master, Shape is Tiny and Off Page

[karininwinnipeg]

Hi there. Today I experienced something I've never seen before. I was walking a class through creating a custom shape (draw 3 boxes, group them, add fields, add connection points, add field text to shape, make master), and then editing the master (right-click on master in stencil, edit master). When it opened in its editing window, the shape was about 12 inches above the canvas, which was only 2 inches wide. The document we were working on was tabloid (11 x 17), and it looked like the shape was "appearing" roughly where it was on the document before we dragged it into the stencil to create a master out of it.

Is there/where is the setting to set the size of the drawing canvas that you get when you edit a master shape? Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

[Visio Guy]

Hi KiW,

It seems to be a bug in Visio. The first thing Visio does is create a master "page" that tightly encloses the shape, so if you have a 1" x 1" shape, you'll have a 1" x 1" master pages. This always happens.

Then, for some reason, Visio starts placing the shape at the same location that it was on the page. With a master page size of 1" x 1", it is highly likely that the shape will then appear off page.

What I can't figure out is what causes this to start happening. With a new, blank drawing, and simple rectangles, dragging them to the stencil doesn't produce the problem. But after messing around for awhile, it does start happening, and the shapes inside the master are off the page. Crazy.

I guess, just be aware of it and zoom out if you don't see anything, the pull the shape back to where it ought to be. It doesn't affect the behavior of masters dragged onto drawing pages, it only frightens budding power users, and it (yet another) hard-to-explain Visio quirk/bug/issue.