Make a distinction between shapes type on a visio page

[Lazyman]

Hi visio guys,
I have a set of shapes on a page and iwant to access to only rectangle shapes. Is there a shape property that I can use to discriminate between rectangles, lines, etc.
Thanks.

[Paul Herber]

If your shapes were created from a stencil shape called "Rectangle" then the shape Master name will be "Rectangle"  and your code can check for this. However, if you used the drawing tools on the toolbar/ribbon then you are out of luck. All those shapes are just named "Shape.xxx" where xxx is a number.

[Lazyman]

Thank you Paul for your feedback. My shapes have been created from the toolbar. So, I will redraw via the basic stencil and try to catch the type from there. I will let you know.
Thks.

[Nikolay]

You can also mark the shape yourself by adding some custom property., like "type"
Yoh can add custom proertis using shape data window or shape sheet.

[Lazyman]

Thank you foryour feedbacks. I have redrawn my shapes from the stencils instead of the toolbar ribbon and now i can discriminate the shapes according to their types. Now I want to rename the shapes. Therefore, I have added a row (at index 4) in the "User defined cells" section of the shape sheet.

How can i refer to the value of this property? For other properties, I do: shape.Cells("name_of_the_property").FormulaU. Is it ok for user defined cells?

[Lazyman]

Hi, to reach the new property (called name) in the user defined section, I tried the instruction in python
shape.Cells("User. Name").Value
It does not work.
Any hint please? Thanks.

[Nikolay]

"Value" is not valid property. There is "Result" (or "Formula"/"FormulaU", depending on what you are after). You could try:

Cells("User.Name").Result("")

Without auto-complete and parameter information every single step becomes a *** adventure (c) Deadwood That's one of the reasons why people still use VB to work with Visio
Or you have managed to make the python auto-suggest and show parameter info after you type '.' or '(' ?

[Lazyman]

Hi Nikolai, I have put
shape.Cells("User. Name").Result("" ) then Formula then Formula and I always get an error message.
Currently, the value of the user defined property is "MyShape"
I can get the value of quite all the properties in the shapesheet except those in the user section.

[Surrogate]

you want get or set value ?
Result used for get value becuase it is read-only property

[Lazyman]

I want to get the value of the property. I tried result, result("")

[Yacine]

try
shape.Cells("User. Name").ResultStr("")

[Lazyman]

Cool, it is OK now. Thank you guys.