Visio Guy

Not sure if this qualifies for the power user forum but here goes :-).  Imagine a 36 x 24 page size.  Now imagine that I divide that page (for my drawing purposes) into a quadrant of 4 unequal sections and that the lower left section corresponds to 17 x 11.  Is there a way to easily (without pulling my hair out) ONLY print the 17 x 11 section, when desired, across ALL pages of a single Visio file that is say, 50 pages?  The concept here is that there are times I need to print the entire page, but other times I just want to print the lower left 17 x 11 section.

If I have to, I could do the printing from another program such as Adobe Pro, if it has more intelligent print options.

Thanks

Don't think there is a direct way in the print options, but two other things come to mind:

a) Put the lower left quadrant on a background page and make it the background page for aour 50 other pages.
If you only want the lower left section printed, print the backgroundpage. Otherwise all other pages you print, will contain the section, too.

b) Put the shapes in the lower left section on a layer and all other shapes on a different layer.
You can turn on and off the "printability" of the layers as you need them.

This might be done as a macro:
Loop through all pages
  create a selection of the appropriate size
  print the selection
endloop

Hi David,
what an interesting question. It brings up the concept of foreground page as opposite to background pages. Masks that you would put in front of your actual working pages, to hide certain areas of the drawing. But, that would need to be implemented directly in Visio's core.

Instead, I'd offer you a work around, consisting of a limiter shape, that you put on your background page. This limiter defines the margins of your drawing.
The pages themselves must reference the coordinates of the limiter in their shapesheets. You'd write those formulas by hand - in case of 2..3 pages- or by macro - in case of more pages or if you need this function more often.

Hello, a belated thank you to everyone who helped out here.