Timeline Milestone Text Boxes?

[rch-visio07]

Hello...I'm new to this forum and really like it!

I and many others at work are now using MS Visio 2007 - mainly to create timelines to present project schedules to upper management and the public. I am wondering if anyone knows how to help us with this one issue:

When I create a timeline and add milestones (square ones, circles, diamonds, etc) and label the milestone, the text appears above the milestone point...just like it is supposed to. However, is there a way to enclose that text in a lined box shape rather than have it floating in space above the milestone point?

I've tried selecting the field the text is in, then right clicking, selecting 'format' then 'line' and then selecting 01 as pattern (a line), selecting a weight and color then corner type...but when I save it by either selecting "apply" or "ok", no box ever appears! When I reselect the box, it defaults to the original "no line (Pattern = 00) configuration.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[aledlund]

Chris Hopkins does some really neat stuff with timelines. This post by him might give you some ideas on what is involved.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chhopkin/archive/2010/07/23/showing-status-with-the-timeline-shapes.aspx

al

[wapperdude]

The timeline milestone shape is a complex shape.  You need to open the Drawing Explorer Window (View > Drawing Explorer).  That will show you a bunch of shapes.  Keep clicking on the shapes until you find the one that selects the text.  Right click the listed shape in DEW and select open shapesheet.  Scroll down to the Line Format section and set the line style and width that you desire.

The Milestone shape is the "Linestone" shape presented in the UserStuff section.  I updated it to put a box around the text. 

That should give you your box outline.

Example below.

HTH
Wapperdude

[rch-visio07]

Thanks for the tip about opening up the Drawing Explorer Window (DEW) and editing the shapesheet. It works, but it would appear that is a somewhat inefficient way to do this. If I had a lot of milestones, doing that to each one would be cumbersome.

What I find odd is that right clicking the text area does pull up the bility to edit fill and lines, yet MS Visio has decided to make them uneditable. It's not the same for callouts though...I can right click on those, edit text, fill and lines with ease! I know...that's just how MS Visio is...but it seems that if the shape is protected from editing, then the right click menu should have those fields greyed out.

I did download your 'linestone" and dragged it to a sample tiimeline...I'm not entirely sure it worked since I was not able to edit the line without doing the same procedure as before.

Thanks!

[wapperdude]

The Linestone that was included with this post is basically the line milestone that comes with Visio but has the date entry independently move-able.  Then, for this posting, I showed the steps that you need to take to get a box around the text.

Your options:
1.)  do a similar edit to the existing line milestone.  Note, if you go to the document stencil (File > Shapes > Open Document windo), you should see one (or more) copies of the milestone used in your document.  Edit this shape (s), and the placements on your drawing pages will inherit the changes.  You won't need to edit each and every one.  Then, if you want, you can save this to a custom shape stencil as your new "master" for future drawings.

2.)  embellishment would be to add an "action" entry which will show up in the right click menu to either show or hide the text border.

HTH
Wapperdude