Still confused about master shapes

[Jennifer]

As a result of suggestions here, I have been converting a bunch of documents from using copies of large images to instances of those images as master shapes. But there is apparently something I still do not understand.

I started with a new document. I pasted 3-4 images (PNGs) to one page and then moved them onto the Document Stencil. After completing this process, the size of the Visio file was 460 KB.

I then made a bunch of drawings on 4-5 pages using instances of those images. The file size was then 638 KB.

Then came the big test. From another Visio document, I copied a group containing 16 copies of an image of a diamond arranged in a particular array. The file size grew to 2,503 KB.

I then made 16 copies of an instance of a diamond master shape and put them next to the copied copies so as to duplicate the arrangement. The file size grew to 2,583 KB.

I then deleted the group of 16 images that I coped form the other document. I expected the file to go back to something like 700 KB, slightly larger than before I copied the group of images. But it only decreased to 2,498 KB.

What is going on? Why did it not recoup the space used by the now deleted images?

Is there a way that I can tell if an object is connected to a master shape and which one?

[Nikolay]

Dear Jennifer,

There is a special function in Visio to reduce the file size: File -> Reduce File Size
It shows information about the unused things (such as orphaned masters) in the drawing and allows to remove those unused things.

Have you already tried it?

[Jennifer]

Dear Jennifer,

There is a special function in Visio to reduce the file size: File -> Reduce File Size
It shows information about the unused things (such as orphaned masters) in the drawing and allows to remove those unused things.

Have you already tried it?

Nikolay,

Thank you very much. That worked like a charm. I tried removing each component one at a time, checking the file size after each one. The overall file size reduction was 80%.

The one that made the biggest difference (75% reduction in file size) was removing unused master shapes. This is puzzling to me as I did not create any master shapes during this experiment.

Thanks