Timeline: change yymmdd to "n"

[Bucka]

Hello!
I'm new here and registered after searching around for a few hours for a solution to my problem.

I'm creating something that's very similar to a timeline and I find the timeline tool in Visio very easy to use.

My problem is that I want to use numbers (from 0 to X) instead of years. I read somewhere that it's possible to do this by changing some setting in the timeline shapesheet from "yymmdd" to "n".

Does anybody here know if that's possible and if so, could that person explain this in detail?

If what I wrote doesn't work, does anybody know of any other way to achieve this?
I've read that you're able to do this manually (by dragging all the milestones to the correct place of something that looks like a timeline), but that's not an option - I need the snap-to-function.

Thanks in advance

/Bucka

[wapperdude]

The timeline is not very receptive to changes like that. Here is too much underlying code. 

Wapperdude

[Bucka]

Ok, thanks for the reply!
You don't know of any other way to do this?

[Yacine]

...I'm creating something that's very similar to a timeline ...

Two ideas:

1) If you are creating your own time line, then it will be very simple to add time marks labeled from 0 to n. But you won't get the full functionality provided by the microsoft tool.

2) If you want the full functionality, but only want to tweek the display, then you'll need some VBA.
The issue is that you can adjust the labels of the time marks, but the adjustments get overwritten by the plug in. Here comes VBA: a macro can reset the timeline to your preferences, every time they get overwritten.
The macro would be triggered manually.
Disadvantage: the macro must be available = either it is saved in the drawing itself (bad), or in a stencil that must be loaded when the file opens (not much better).

Both solutions can be implemented with a reasonable amount of work.

Rgds,
Y.

[Bucka]

Two ideas:

1) If you are creating your own time line, then it will be very simple to add time marks labeled from 0 to n. But you won't get the full functionality provided by the microsoft tool.

2) If you want the full functionality, but only want to tweek the display, then you'll need some VBA.
The issue is that you can adjust the labels of the time marks, but the adjustments get overwritten by the plug in. Here comes VBA: a macro can reset the timeline to your preferences, every time they get overwritten.
The macro would be triggered manually.
Disadvantage: the macro must be available = either it is saved in the drawing itself (bad), or in a stencil that must be loaded when the file opens (not much better).

Both solutions can be implemented with a reasonable amount of work.

Thank you very much for the answer. I'm afraid I know to little VBA to do this. I might have to settle for your first suggestion even though it will be a pain to put all the milestone at the correct position. Might try to find another software as well.

Thanks again!

[Yacine]

Actually a "option 1 or 2" could keep us going on, on finding the best solution for you. This was more of a question to you.

[Bucka]

Actually a "option 1 or 2" could keep us going on, on finding the best solution for you. This was more of a question to you.

Sorry for the late reply.
I don't really understand what you mean? Could you explain the question in another way?