Master Sahpes with Containers

[Ed H]

Hi

This has been driving me crazy for quite a while and I can't seem to find any info on it. Help GREATLY appreciated!! I'm pretty new at this and may have overstepped my limitations...

I've created a new stencil containing a shape derived from an ellipse called ClauseField. This has Shape Data Prop.Visible (a Bool) for the obvious purpose. In another master shape called a Query, there 3 of these ClauseFields in a container. The container has 3 action rows that set the Prop.Visible of each of the contained ClauseFields.

When editing the master shape, everything works great. The ClauseFields wink on and off as instructed. Save it off to the stencil and instance it in a document and the actions belonging to the container are lost.

I'm confused!! Is this by design and simply can't be done or am I missing something. My not so impressive google-fu hasn't turned up anything on this and the frustration level is reaching the toxic indicator!

Thank you!!

Ed

[Surrogate]

Try create group instead of using MS Visio container!

[Croc]

Can you attach a file with these shapes?

[Paul Herber]

A shape within a stencil may consist of one or more shapes. However, when that shape is dropped on a Visio page it will be grouped into a single shape. This by design and cannot be changed. 2nd however, all you have to do is ungroup the shape and all should be well.

[Ed H]

Hey

Well, Paul hit it on the head!! Ungroup and all is the way I expected it to be! What a marvelous waste of (I'm not going to admit how much) time!.

If you're still interested, I'd be happy to post the files, but I suspect they're far too simple to be of any interest here.

Thanks all!!!

Ed

[Andy.Boyet]

Thank you Ed for the post and Paul for the answer. I had the same problem. Much appreciated!

[vojo]

FWIW
- create a group
     - 1 query
     - 3 clausefields
     - Shape sheet formula
- set group behavior to children first
- Save group to stencil

Now when you drop, group drops....but you don't have to click twice to select a clausefield.

Note that visio really does not support "shape awareness" in that dropping 2 related masters still cant find each other.
The closest I found for this is to use some user cells at the page level as a mailbox, but its very clumsy and does not scale well
(4 master shapes with private 1-1 msgs would need 12 user cells at the page level....created apriori ala template).

Even "add to group" behaviors wont solve this since new child shape still can find the master or group shape ala "#REF"

VBA could do this...only concern is security settings vs 1000 different users of this stencil