Converting a group to a shape.

[Michael]

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere - I've had a look and couldn't see anything related.

I've got a shape (well a number of shapes, as it happens, that I want to add a small graphic (picture) to. The shapes are all process shapes I've copied from a Visio stencil into my own .vss file.

This is no problem and I can save the shapes with the picture embedded. However, when I try and run the Shape Substitute routine from Paul's SuperUtils module I get a warning that the shape I'm trying to substitute is a group and may not substitute as expected (it doesn't, most of the links break).

The question is, "can I convert these groups into shapes, albeit shapes with embedded pictures?

Thanks!

[Paul Herber]

Hi Michael, there are many problems with substituting grouped shapes with another shape, I'd certainly be very interested in anyone else's ideas about it but I really don't think there is any sensible way to do it.

[Michael]

Hi Paul,

Maybe the way forward is to do the conversion in a stencil then update the shapes at the end, just before publication - if I get the chance I'll see if that works.

The only reason I asked is because one particular client wanted to customise the shapes that way. Personally I think the way forward is to do such stuff in a professional business process management tool, but if it can be done within Visio it would be a bonus. (My "solution" was to add a background image to the pages - they seemed happy with that...)