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another question regarding data linking

Started by soop, December 04, 2020, 05:43:11 PM

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soop

Hello again.
  After my very first post regarding data linking, I was sure I could get Visio to do what I want, and to an extent I can.
My goal is to label a simple network diagram with the relevant information from an external document.  I've chosen Excel for now because all the tutorials I've read use it, and it's convenient to learn with.

The problem I have is the lack of formatting options; what I'm doing is probably a little unusual in some respect because instead of assigning shapes based on values, I'm trying to directly input those values into the diagram - for example customer name, IP Address of router X etc.

I've found I can do this, and also format the text as needed by linking the data directly to a shape (usually a solid square), but the formatting is lost when the data source is updated, and I can't edit the default formatting for the data (or some data at all, for instance, text justification).

I'm aware I'm not using the data link feature in quite the intended way, but is there a method by which I can write these values directly onto a shape and have them retain the formatting of the overall shape?

Surrogate


soop

#2
Quote from: Surrogate on December 04, 2020, 07:06:47 PM
Did you try Data Graphics?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/data-graphics-an-overview-7b438c66-dfcc-4931-af85-05e5aa9bf929

https://youtu.be/bpyK15sj6mw

Thanks Surrogate, that helped a great deal.  Now the formatting is available and persists through changes.  The last piece of this particular puzzle is that the position of the text fields won't persist through a change in values.

What I'm trying to do is grab some values from the excel table and list them, with a filled oblong shape as a background.  When the values in the table are altered and refreshed, the text labels change position to the top of the shape.

Is there a way to keep the vertical and horizontal position relative to the "container" shape?  It would be nice to have this fixed so that it can be moved as one object

*edit* it seems that the labels were returning to their "default position" within the shape.  I've had a look, and I can adjust the horizontal and vertical values to things like center, left, top, bottom etc.  Centered horizontally is fine, but I'd like to be able to have more granularity  with the vertical position

*edit2* Ok, it looks like the solution is to seperate it into disparate shapes with the ID and Value at top and bottom, and then combine those altogether.  That way the positions in the sub-shape are kept.

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