Searching for 'My Shapes' in Visio 2013 returns no results

[ATasker]

I just wanted to share a mind bender I've been on for the last while, in case others are having the same frustration!

Symptoms are;
- When searching for shapes, the default shapes return but not shapes shown in 'My Shapes'
- You can still see all of your downloaded shapes in 'My Shapes', and bring them into drawings
- You have already tried fixing your Windows Search index
- Your regional settings default you to 'Metric Units' (This is key)

After much searching and testing, this article finally gave me some hints;
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-visio/the-visibility-of-metric-stencils-in-more-shapes/b1e00b25-bb56-4118-b724-8a0624cd286e

So on a whim I started a blank drawing using 'US Units' and voila, suddenly I can search all of my shapes!

Turns out while Microsoft Visio 2013 will show 'My Shapes' in all drawings, regardless of the units, it does still treat the search functions based on the units you have set!

So to resolve this issue you can either rename all of your stencils with a _M.vss or _M.vssx suffix, or simply complete your drawings in US units.

[JohnGoldsmith]

I agree that this isn't great.  The stencil filtering is based on the activepage, so as a workaround (I recognise it's not ideal), you could either temporarily change your page's units to metric and then open your stencil, or, add another blank page, set its units to metric and just select that page whenever you want to add metric stencils.

Note that activepage only needs to be metric at the time of opening via the more shapes menu.  Once it's open it will stay open via workspace info.

Hope that helps.

Best regards

John