Connectors stopped working in one of my drawings

[Steph]

Has anyone else seen this in Visio 2010 or, better, has anyone got a fix for it?

New connectors have stopped working in one of my drawings.  I've just tried to add some shapes and then connect them (for a simple block diagram).  However, when I start trying to place connectors, hovering the mouse over a shape no longer highlights the shape border in red.  Placing the mouse near a connection point no longer brings up the crosshair for attaching my connector to that connection point.  I can open a new drawing and the connectors all work as expected, it's just a problem with this one, existing drawing.

Very frustrating, so I'd like to find a solution, rather than having to start a new drawing.

[amybrowngreer]

I have been having a similar issue triggered by getting into the negative coordinates of the page:

http://visguy.com/vgforum/index.php?topic=7424.0

Could this be what is also triggering your issue?  I have found no resolution yet, but I am hoping that if enough people have this issue, someone will know how to resolve it.

[RudySchneider]

Perhaps this is not your problem, but I know it has happened to me before, though I don't know why:

On the VIEW tab, click the "expand" arrow in the bottom-right side of Visual Aids.  Make certain SNAP and GLUE are currently active, and Snap To Connection points is enabled.

Oh, and be sure to double-check that your Layer settings have Snap and Glue enabled.  Again, it's happened to me before.

[Hey Ken]

   Huh.  Same thing just happened to me.  No idea why.  All the snap & glue settings looked fine.  It's just that connectors wouldn't connect.  I rebooted, thinking it might be some random alpha particle flipped a bit somewhere, but it did no good.  I checked yesterday's end-of-day backup and it worked fine.  So I copied the entire page from the bad drawing into yesterday's good drawing and it worked fine.  Go figure.  At least I'm back in business.

   Using Visio 2016 professional again.

   Always something!

   - Ken

[wapperdude]

Hmmmm.  Y'all must be very special.  Cannot replicate this problem.  What I  tried... standard, blank, portrait page.  Visio does not get to expand it.  Then  I placed multiple  rectangles on the page and rectangles off the page.  Then, used connector shapes to go between shapes on the page, from shapes off page to other shapes off page, from shapes on page to shapes off page, and visa versa.  All connectors glued just fine.

Well, I tried.

[Hey Ken]

Mr. Dude:

   This bug is so elusive, I did not expect you to succeed.  In my decades of using Visio, I've never seen such behavior.  But thanks for trying.

   It turns out the offending drawing continues to exhibit the bad behavior.  So I sanitized it and attached it for your enjoyment.  We'll see if it fails for you too.

   - Ken

[vojo]

well, that is 10 minutes I never get back.

So where exactly is the problem in your posted drawing.

[wapperdude]

Hi Ken...

Like Vojo, everything I tested stayed glued.  I did notice, under the Snap and Glue settings, Gluing was disabled, but that did not seem to have impact.  I didn't try all shapes, but I did try a variety, both on and off page.

[Hey Ken]

   As I mentioned, all connection points are being ignored.  Usually when you connect a line to a shape, the connection turns green at the end of the line.  On the attached drawing it doesn't turn green, although it does snap to the connection point.  But if you move the connected shape, the line is not connected and does not travel with the connected shape.  You'll notice that many of the lines have green endpoints that show they're connected.  Unconnect the green end, and it won't connect or turn green again.  Why?  Beats me.  As I said, I did a ctrl-A/ctrl-C/ctrl-V to another drawing and life was good again.

   I just downloaded my own attachment, and it still behaved as badly as the original, which also still behaves badly even after a re-boot.  If the problem is not reproduceable, then it must be something on my end somehow.  But I do have the workaround, so that's that.

   Thanks, as always, for the comments.

   - Ken

[wapperdude]

Ken...
I understood your issue.  I did exactly as you indicate.  I grabbed many 2-D shapes, as is, that is, I did not previously perturb the connection lines, and dragged them all about.  I moved the left ones in, the right ones out, some I shook all about (not sure why that song popped into my mind).  The connections stayed glued.  They "tagged along" as if it were great fun.  They made a "point" of staying glued.

When I get bit more free time, I'll re-visit this, but I don't expect any other discoveries.

[wapperdude]

Had that spare momement, what I found...

Most, but not everything stayed glued.  Couple connectors didn't follow the shape, and the connected that terminated upon another connector wasn't glued either.  Certainly not a massive gluing failure by any means.

Changing, actually, activating the glue settings, and the glue to geometry, fixed those problems.  The shapes had to be re-glued initially. and the connector-connector connection required the glue to shape geometry (there was no connection point).  Once the gluing properties were established, all worked well and behaved as expected.