[Beginner tutorial for Visio

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Download free Microsoft PowerPoint guide course material and training (PDF file 82 pages) – type of file pdf and size MB, tutorial for level Advanced. Download An Introduction to Microsoft Visio Flow Charting Software, a free document PDF by Kennesaw State University.
 
 

 

Microsoft Visio download free tutorial in pdf

 

In , by means of the Windows update mechanism, a verification program called ” Windows Genuine Advantage ” WGA was downloaded and installed. This behavior angered users and generated complaints in China with a lawyer stating that “Microsoft uses its monopoly to bundle its updates with the validation programs and forces its users to verify the genuineness of their software”.

A common complaint [50] comes from those who want to purchase a computer that usually comes preinstalled with Windows without a copy of Windows pre-installed and without paying extra for the license either so that another operating system can be used or because a license was already acquired elsewhere, such as through the MSDN Academic Alliance program.

While it is possible to obtain a computer with no or free operating systems, [56] virtually all large computer vendors continue to bundle Microsoft Windows with the majority of the personal computers in their ranges. The claimed increase in the price of a computer resulting from the inclusion of a Windows license has been called the “Windows tax” or “Microsoft tax” by opposing computer users.

In , all major OEMs agreed to this restriction. Microsoft does not provide refunds for Windows licenses sold through an OEM, including licenses that come with the purchase of a computer or are pre-installed on a computer.

According to Microsoft’s End User License Agreement for Windows 7 the ability to receive a refund for the operating system is determined by the hardware manufacturer: [61]. By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, contact the manufacturer or installer to determine its return policy. You must comply with that policy, which might limit your rights or require you to return the entire system on which the software is installed.

Acer Inc. Instead, contact the manufacturer or installer to determine their return policy for a refund or credit. Based on the updated language, vendors refused to issue partial refunds for Windows licenses, requiring that the computer be returned altogether.

In some countries, this practice has been ruled a violation of consumer protection law. Microsoft’s market dominance and business practices have attracted widespread resentment, which is not necessarily restricted to the company’s competitors. In a publication, Dan Geer argued the prevalence of Microsoft products has resulted in a monoculture which is dangerously easy for viruses to exploit.

Microsoft has been criticized for the use of permatemp employees employees employed for years as “temporary,” and therefore without medical benefits , use of forced retention tactics, where departing employees would be sued to prevent departure, as well as more traditional cost-saving measures, ranging from cutting medical benefits to not providing towels in company locker rooms.

Historically, Microsoft has also been accused of overworking employees, in many cases, leading to burnout within just a few years of joining the company.

The company is often referred to as a “Velvet Sweatshop”, a term which originated in a Seattle Times article, [71] and later became used to describe the company by some of Microsoft’s own employees. For example, the kitchenettes have free beverages and many buildings include exercise rooms and showers.

However, the company has been accused of attempting to keep employees at the company for unreasonably long hours and working them too much.

A US state lawsuit was brought against Microsoft in representing 8, current and former employees that had been classified as “temporary” and “freelance”, and became known as Vizcaino v. The Final Settlement [73] came in The case was decided on the IRS-defined basis that such “permatemps” had their jobs defined by Microsoft, worked alongside regular employees doing the same work, and worked for long terms. A side effect of the “permatemp” lawsuit is that now contract employees are prevented from participating in team morale events and other activities that could be construed as making them “employees”.

They are also limited to month contracts and must leave after that time for 6 months before returning under contract. Microsoft is the largest American corporate user of H-1B guest worker visas and has joined other large technology companies like Google in recently lobbying for looser H-1B visa restrictions. Jesse Jackson believes Microsoft should hire more minorities and women. Jackson has urged other companies to diversify their workforce. He believes that Microsoft made some progress when it appointed two women to its board of directors in During the antitrust case United States v.

Microsoft , ATL sent a poll to 19 state attorneys general purporting to show that “the public believes state AGs should devote their energy to causes other than Microsoft”. In June , the AdTI published a report, quickly pulled under the argument that it was a draft version, which contained criticism of the copyleft model and the GNU General Public License.

A May press release for the report stated that it would contain arguments suggesting that governments could be threatened by hackers and terrorists who could study potential vulnerabilities due to source availability if it used open source software. However, the draft contained no references to these topics.

The advert featured a newborn baby being launched out of its mother—aging as it flies through the air, and crashing into a gravestone. It contained the tagline “Life is short, play more. The comparison included the cost of hardware, and put Linux at a disadvantage by installing it on more expensive but poorer-performing hardware compared to that used for Windows.

Microsoft spokesperson Catherine Brooker expressed the belief that the article had been “heavily written” by IBM employees who supported the rival OpenDocument format, though she provided no specific evidence. Internet entrepreneur and Wikimedia Foundation founder Jimmy Wales described Microsoft’s offer as unethical.

In , it was found that a photo on the Polish version of Microsoft’s business productivity website—which depicted three people of various races during an office meeting—had been edited to replace the head of an African-American man with that of a Caucasian , whilst also failing to edit the person’s hand to match the different skin color. Microsoft apologized and quickly removed the image.

In , Moneylife. Sapkale was accused of breaking his own site’s privacy policy by posting the IP and email addresses of the commenters, while the commenting duo’s failure to declare any interest looked, at best, like astroturfing.

In details on a partnership between Machinima. This is due to the company being tax resident in Bermuda as mentioned in the accounts for ‘Microsoft Round Island One’, a subsidiary that collects licence fees from the use of Microsoft software worldwide.

Dame Margaret Hodge , a Labour MP in the UK said, “It is unsurprising — yet still shocking — that massively wealthy global corporations openly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the profits they make in the countries where they undertake business”. John C. Dvorak said that in the s, Microsoft classified journalists as “Okay”, “Sketchy”, or “Needs work” and targeted “Needs work” journalists in an attempt to have them terminated.

Dvorak said that he was denied information about Windows because he was on a blacklist. Microsoft along with Google, Yahoo , Cisco , AOL , Skype , and other companies has cooperated with the Chinese government in implementing a system of Internet censorship. On June 4, , the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre , searches for the Tank Man image and videos were censored by Microsoft Bing search engine worldwide.

Hours after Microsoft acknowledged the issue, the search returned only pictures of tanks elsewhere in the world. Search engines that license results from Microsoft such as DuckDuckGo and Yahoo faced similar issues. Microsoft said the issue was “due to an accidental human error.

The director of Human Rights Watch , Kenneth Roth , said he found the idea it was an inadvertent error “hard to believe”. David Greene, Civil Liberties Director at Electronic Frontier Foundation , said that content moderation was impossible to do perfectly and “egregious mistakes are made all the time”, but he further elaborated that “At worst, this was purposeful suppression at the request of a powerful state.

Microsoft was the first company to participate in the PRISM surveillance program , according to leaked NSA documents obtained by The Guardian [] and The Washington Post [] in June , and acknowledged by government officials following the leak. Microsoft has denied [] participation in such a program. In a statement, Microsoft said that they “provide customer data only in response to legal processes. Windows 10 was criticized on-launch for having default settings that send various information regarding user behaviors to Microsoft and its “trusted partners”, such as data regarding user contacts and calendar events, location data and history, “telemetry” diagnostics data ; [] this could not be fully disabled on non-enterprise versions of Windows 10 , an “advertising ID”, as well as further data when the Cortana assistant is enabled in full.

Microsoft faced criticism from France’s data protection commission and the European Union for its practices in regards to Windows On subsequent iterations of the OS, Microsoft has clarified its data collection policies, and made its out-of-box experience provide clearer information on Windows privacy settings, and the effects they have on the overall user experience.

In May , Microsoft announced that a number of its MSN contract journalists would be replaced by robot journalism leading to criticism about which stories would be displayed and their quality. Microsoft has come under some criticism for its attitude to homosexuality and Xbox Live. Users may not use the string “gay” in a gamertag even in a non-homosexual context, for example as part of a surname , or refer to homosexuality in their profile including self-identifying as such , as the company considers this “content of a sexual nature” or “offensive” to other users and therefore unsuitable for the service.

Asymmetric numeral systems is widely used family of method in data compression, whose author gave it to public domain – wanting to be unrestricted by the patent system, also successfully defending from patent by Google.

In , the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accused at least 82 major brands of being connected to forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang. Microsoft is reported as being supplied by three Chinese factories employing Uyghur and Xinjiang workers.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Overview of the criticism of Microsoft. Further information: Software patents and free software. Main article: Bundling of Microsoft Windows. Main article: Microsoft litigation. European Committee for Interoperable Systems. March 31, Archived PDF from the original on June 18, Retrieved May 25, The Register. Archived from the original on May 17, Retrieved May 17, CIO Updates. Archived from the original on February 8, Retrieved January 29, Archived from the original on August 31, Retrieved August 31, Archived from the original on September 20, Retrieved September 19, Archived from the original on September 15, Archived from the original on September 18, Windows Central.

September 16, Azure Government. January 24, Archived from the original on September 19, The Guardian.

Archived from the original on February 23, Retrieved February 25, Archived from the original on December 11, Retrieved February 5, Microsoft — Embrace, Extend, Extinguish”. Dobb’s Portal. Archived from the original on December 12, Archived from the original on January 28, Archived from the original on June 16, Retrieved June 6, Groklaw News. Archived from the original on May 13, Building Windows 8. Archived from the original on August 2, Retrieved October 17, PC World.

Archived from the original on October 5, Retrieved August 3, The Verge. Archived from the original on March 13, Archived from the original on July 25, Ars Technica.

Archived from the original on April 9, Archived from the original on April 5, Disruptive echo effects, poor room acoustics, and choppy videos are some common issues that can detract from the effectiveness of online calls and meetings. Across the manufacturing industry, pressure continues to rise as organizations and their workforces balance unpredictable supply chains, complex regulatory and compliance requirements, advanced security threats, and heightened competition.

One of the challenges of hybrid work is enabling teams to remain connected, engaged, and in sync. The last two years have proven that every organization needs a digital fabric that connects the entire organization—from the boardroom to the frontline, and from internal teams to customers and partners. No company is better positioned to help organizations meet the demands of hybrid work than Microsoft.

As the future of work unfolds, industry analysts. Just last month, we released our Annual Work Trend Index to better understand how work has changed over the past two years. With rising staff shortages and increasing costs from security breaches, it is time to review the business case for modernizing your endpoint management. As the shift to hybrid work becomes a reality, it is clear that the workplace today is different than it was two years ago. The new Jira Cloud for Teams empowers teams with agility, intelligence, and actions to deliver a collaborative app experience for hybrid work.

Skip to main content. Microsoft Blog. Search the M site Submit. Previous slide Next slide. Introducing Microsoft Defender: A new Microsoft online security app for you and your family We are excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Defender for individuals—a new security app designed to keep individuals…. Visio allows inserting text either within the shapes or in the document. You also get to do text formatting just like any other text editor.

It is easy to insert text within a shape. Just double-click within a shape to type the text. Notice that Visio automatically zooms into the shape to enable typing and zooms out when you click outside the shape. To insert a text in a document such as a heading for the chart, click the Text Box dropdown menu in the Insert tab on the Ribbon and select either horizontal or vertical text box. Backgrounds are inserted using pages called background pages.

Background pages can contain graphics or text such as copyright info and other information. Background pages are always separate but appear overlaid on the main page. You can change the background of a document by choosing from preset backgrounds or using your own background template. To insert a background, click the Background dropdown menu from the Design tab on the Ribbon and choose a background preset.

This creates a new page in addition to the diagram page. You can right-click the newly created background page to rename it. The new background will be automatically applied to all newly created pages in the document. Apart from the shapes that are part of the diagram, you can add your own images to the document. Images can come from any online or offline source. If you add an image to the background page, the image will appear on all the pages in the document.

To insert your images or graphics, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and select from any of the commands in the Illustrations section. It can be a picture on your local drive, an online source, a chart or even a CAD drawing.

You can also replicate the picture on all the pages by inserting the picture in a background page. To do this, select the background page and insert the picture as described above. Drag and resize the picture as needed. Now, navigate to the page containing the diagram and you will find that the picture appears on that page and any other subsequent pages that are added.

Sometimes, you might want to combine two or more elements of the diagram together. You can use containers to group shapes that are dependent on each other. Callouts help in inserting more text outside the shape. Callouts are always connected to the shape and move along with it. To insert a container, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Container dropdown menu in the Diagram Parts section.

You will see that there are many designs to choose from for the container. Once you select a design, you can drag the container around the grouped shapes. Release the mouse to lock the container. The container also contains an area for typing text. Double-click the heading area to type the text.

Select the shape for which you want to use the callout. To insert a callout, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Callout dropdown menu in the Diagram Parts section. You will see that there are many designs to choose from for the callout. Select a design appropriate for the callout. The callout will appear connected to the selected shape. In this example, we have added a callout for the Back to Research process called Extensive Research.

The callout is linked to the shape and can be moved about anywhere in the drawing, however it will always stay connected to the shape. Visio will zoom in when you click the callout to enable typing and will zoom out when clicked outside the callout. This text now needs to be converted into a hyperlink.

To do so, select the text in the text box and in the Insert tab again. Click Link to open the Hyperlinks dialog box. You can specify the links to websites or a local file on your computer. Click OK to convert the selected text into a hyperlink. You can directly hyperlink a text or a shape to a file. Double-clicking the text or shape opens the hyperlinked file.

The procedure is similar to hyperlinking a website. Select the shape or text that you want to create a hyperlink for and click the Link button in the Insert tab of the Ribbon.

In the Hyperlinks dialog box, click Browse… adjacent to the Address field and click Local File… to browse to the location of the file. Make sure that the Use relative path for hyperlink box is selected to ensure that the file path is updated automatically when you change the file location. Visio also makes it possible to hyperlink pages in a multi-page document so that clicking the link will directly take you to the linked page. To hyperlink pages, select a text or shape to be linked to and click Links in the Insert tab in the Ribbon.

In the Hyperlinks dialog box, make sure to click Browse… adjacent to the Sub-address field. Select the destination page in the Page field. You can also set a default zoom level in the Zoom dropdown menu so that navigating to the linked page opens it at the desired zoom. You need not be content with the default theme. Visio allows to customize the theme and overall look of the document. To apply a theme, go to the Design tab and choose from any of the many theme options available. Once you click any of the available themes, the theme will be applied to the document.

You can further personalize it by selecting from one of the many options in the Variants section. The Variants section allows you to customize theme colors as needed. Clicking the dropdown menu in the Variants section allows to customize the theme colors, effects, and connectors.

It opens the New Theme Colors dialog box, which allows to customize each of the accents in the theme. If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, you should be right at home in Visio with respect to formatting text.

You can format titles and text within shapes. You can also use the Format Painter command to copy formatting and paste it into another shape or text box. To format the text, select the text box containing the text or highlight the text itself. Then, choose from the options available in the Font and Paragraph sections of the Home tab.

You can change the font, size, color, and paragraph alignment. If you want to change the font styles in a shape, just double-click the shape to select the text within the shape and change the font styles as desired. You can also format the shapes to give them a more professional or casual look as desired. To format shapes, select the shape in the diagram and format using the options available in the Shape Styles section.

You can select predefined shape styles or you can customize the shape using the Fill dropdown menu. To adjust the color of the shape border, select a color from the Line dropdown menu. The Effects menu allows to add special effects to your shape such as drop shadows or 3D rotations. Visio makes it easy to format the shape outlines and the connectors.

You might be looking to format a shape outline to make it stand out from the rest of the shapes or to highlight something important. To format a shape outline, click the shape or hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and select multiple shapes.

This will open a Format Shape flyout. In the Line section, select the options you need to customize the shape outline. You can change the color of the shape outline, increase the width to add more weight, change the rounding, and a whole lot more.

You can also create gradients for the line to suit the diagram. Like shape outlines, connectors can also be formatted as needed.

To format a connector, select the connector in the diagram and bring up the Format Shape pane by going to the Line dropdown menu and clicking Line Options In the Line section of the Format Shapes pane, select the Dash type of your choice to change the connector pattern. You can also change the color of the connector and adjust the transparency levels as needed.

Visio comes with visual aids to help align and structure the elements in the diagram so that it appears great both on-screen and in print. The main visual aids available include rulers, grids, and guides. Rulers help in providing perspective to the elements in the diagram. They help orient the shapes to attain a consistent and clean look.

Rulers can be switched off or on with a simple checkbox in the Show section of the View tab. When you move a shape, you will notice that there are 3 dotted lines shown in the following example in red rectangles on both the vertical and horizontal rulers. These 3 dotted lines denote the left, middle, and right parts of the diagram. When you drag the shape vertically or horizontally, these 3 dotted lines help position the shape exactly at the place you need.

Just like rulers, guides help in orienting different shapes of the diagram properly. You can create any number of guides from both the vertical and horizontal rulers. To create a guide, simply drag a line from either the vertical or horizontal rulers.

Guides are represented by lines, which appear thick when selected. You can delete a guide by simply selecting the guide and pressing the Delete key on the keyboard.

Uncheck the Guides checkbox in the View tab to remove all the guides from view. Dragging a shape onto a guide will enable you to snap the shape to the guide.

When a shape is snapped to a guide, it moves along with the guide. Grids not only help to align shapes within the drawing but can also be an important measurement tool. Grids comprise of square boxes of defined area, which can be adjusted.

Therefore, grids help you have an estimate of the likely area occupied by the shape, which allows you to size the shapes as needed. You can also customize the size of each grid by adjusting the spacing between the grids.

To do so, click the small downward facing arrow to the bottom-right of the Show section in the View tab. Apart from commonly used visual aids such as the ruler, guides, and grids, Visio also comes with few other visual aids to help you better organize your diagram. One of the advantages of using SmartShapes is the ability to quickly and easily connect a shape to the top four favorite shapes. AutoConnect helps to quickly select a shape from the top four and instantly establish a connection to the new shape.

Sometimes, you might not need this feature. In such cases, you can disable the AutoConnect feature by simply unchecking the AutoConnect checkbox from the Visual Aids section of the View tab. When the AutoConnect checkbox is unchecked, the SmartShapes and connecting arrows do not appear when a shape is selected.

Dynamic grid provides a relative alignment cue when you insert a new shape. When the Dynamic Grid option is turned on, you will see guides and indicators relative to the shape. Dynamic Grid can be used in conjunction with the actual Grid. The actual Grid is more of an absolute measurement and should be considered when precise measurements are of importance in deciding the placement of the shapes. The Dynamic Grid is more of a relative measurement. In the above example, we see that turning on the Dynamic Grid allows us to see the relative distance of the new shape with respect to pre-existing shapes.

Connection Points help in connecting shapes to specific points along the surface of a shape. For example, a shape can have four Connection Points along its perimeter to which connectors can attach to. Turning on Connection Points help to connect shapes precisely at defined connection points. Connection Points can be identified by green squares that appear on all sides of the shape.

If you want to connect to the shape directly rather than to a connection point on the shape, uncheck the Connection Points checkbox in the View tab of the ribbon. Task Panes provide additional functionality to the user interface. You can use task panes to customize or add parameters to an object.

The Shapes pane which is there by default, is an example of a Task Pane. Task Panes can be floating or docked and can be resized as needed. Apart from the Shapes task pane, there are quite a few other panes, which can be accessed from the Task Panes dropdown menu in the View tab of the Ribbon. The Shape Data pane allows entry of additional shape metadata. This metadata is contextual and depends on the shape being selected.

This is especially useful while working with complex diagrams. This allows to set precise measurements of a shape. You can also change the angle of orientation of the shape and the pin position from which the measurements are to be considered.

The Navigation pane is available only in the Office version of Visio. It basically lists all the elements of the diagram and makes it easy to navigate to each of them. This is especially useful if the diagram has varied shapes and you want to navigate to a specific shape type.

Selecting the name of the shape in the Navigation pane selects it in the canvas. It is easy to work with multiple windows or multiple versions of a document in Visio.

You can switch between windows easily or arrange them side by side for a comparative look. The options for window rearrangement can be found in the Window section of the View tab.

New Window basically allows to create a new copy of the existing window. The new copy will not show the stencils directly, however, they can be selected by clicking the More Shapes arrow in the Shapes pane.

The new window can be identified by the presence of a number in the title bar of the window. In the following example, the original file name was BlkDiagm. Using the New Window command creates a new window with BlkDiagm: 2 in the title bar. This function allows you to arrange all windows side by side. This feature is useful for comparing two windows, however, if you have a high-resolution display, you might be able to accommodate more windows beside each other.

The Shapes pane and other panes can be minimized to allow more screen real estate. This function allows cascading of windows to give an overall view of the open windows. The active window is in the foreground, while inactive windows are in the background with title bars visible. Cascade view is useful to know which documents are open at a glance. The right side of the Print menu shows a preview of the output.

You can change the orientation of the page, page size, and select only the pages that you need to print. Depending on your printer, you can also print in color or in greyscale. Remember that printing in black and white might not produce a good output. Visio includes several ways to create a PDF of the drawing, which is extremely useful for sharing with others.

You can save the drawing as a Visio drawing. This opens the Save As dialog box. You might want to use this if you need to have fine grain control over the PDF document such as PDF version or compatibility properties. You can also directly email the diagram to a recipient. This creates a new email in your default email client with the PDF file readily attached. Just enter the email address of the recipient to send the attachment.

Exporting image formats is useful while sharing the drawing easily with others or to put it up on a web page. To export a drawing, go to the File menu, click Save As and in the Save As type field, choose from the list of supported formats. You can choose from any of the abovementioned graphics formats.

Once you choose a graphics format to export to, you will get some options to choose from depending on the capabilities of the graphic format. The options in the Operation and Color format fields are format specific.

You can leave them mostly as default. Set the Background color as white if you have a background for the drawing. Set the Quality as needed. You can also rotate the drawing or flip it horizontally or vertically.

The resolution and size of the output diagram can be matched with the screen, printer, or source. You can also input a custom resolution or size. Click OK. You can also export drawings to web pages which can be hosted on a web site. Visio allows customizing what goes into the web page. You can select which of the components of the diagram that you want to publish and the number of pages to publish. You can also provide a page title.

The HTML file is created in the chosen location along with a folder containing the supporting files. Both the HTML file and the folder are linked together. Adding SmartShapes automatically creates layers. Layers are basically overlays, which can be individually customized and turned on or off. Each shape and connector in the diagram forms a layer whose properties can be customized. To know the list of layers in the diagram, in the Editing section of the Home tab, click the Layers dropdown menu and click Layer Properties This opens the Layer Properties dialog box, which you can use to customize the different layers in the diagram.

The Layer Properties dialog box lists the different layers in the document and allows changing the individual properties of the layers. Layers are automatically assigned to shapes. However, Visio allows to assign layers to shapes as needed. You can also create your own layers.

Let us start by creating a new layer and then assign some shapes to the new layer. Go to the Layer Properties… dialog box in the Layers dropdown menu from the Editing section of the Home tab and click New… Type a name for the new layer. The new layer will be created in the Layer Properties dialog box and will initially have zero shapes, as they are yet to be assigned.

Shapes can be assigned to any layer. To assign a shape to a layer, click the shape or connector in the diagram and then, click Assign to Layer in the Layers dropdown menu from the Editing section of the Home tab.

It opens the Layer dialog box from which a shape can be assigned to either an existing or a newly created layer. Note that the New Layer that was created earlier is now in the list. A shape can be assigned to more than one layer as well.

To assign a shape to all the layers in the document, click All and then click OK. The Layer Properties dialog box allows to change the properties of individual layers. The Name field lists the type of layer, while the field lists the number of shapes in that type. In the following example, we see that there are nine equipment shapes in this diagram. There is a row of checkboxes for each layer type that can be selected or deselected.

Unchecking the Visible checkbox makes the shape invisible in the drawing. If the Print checkbox is checked, the shape will be printed along with the others. Unchecking the Print checkbox will not print the shapes in the layer. Similarly, layers can be made active or locked. Shapes in an active layer can be manipulated without affecting the other shapes or layers. When you lock a shape, Visio prevents any changes from happening to the shape.

You cannot drag the shape or change its contents. Snap and Glue will be checked, if the shapes are allowed to snap to a grid. You can also represent a layer by a color for easy recognition. When you represent a layer by its color, the shapes belonging to that layer will also be colored in the diagram.

This is useful if you want to differentiate a set of shapes from another. Themes and Styles are useful to give the diagram a design makeover and make it stand out.

Visio provides a standard set of themes and styles, which are customizable. Themes apply to the entire diagram.

Themes comprise of a set of colors and effects that generally blend well with each other. They are a great way to quickly give the diagram a polished look. Themes also affect other parts of the document such as titles, headings, text, etc. To apply a theme, go to the Design tab and select a theme from the Themes section. The dropdown arrow provides more choices categorized by theme type. When you click a theme, all the aspects of the diagram and other parts of the document reflect the theme settings.

A theme can have many variants, which can be selected from the Variants section of the Design tab. Styles are different from themes such that, they are applicable to a selected shape or a group of shapes. Styles help in customizing the aspects of a particular style.

To change a style of a shape, select the shape and from the Home tab, then select a style from the Shape Styles section. Style can be applied to both shape elements in the diagram as well as to individual text boxes. You can select multiple shapes to apply the style to all of them together.

When you change a theme after applying a style to a shape, the shape will take up the characteristics of the theme but will still remain distinct from other shapes. Of course, you can continue to customize the style even after applying a theme.

Themes are useful to customize the appearance of the document. Visio goes a step further and allows to customize the themes themselves. Themes come with variants that can be further customized as needed. Theme variants can be accessed from the Variants section in the Design tab. You can use the stock variants or click the dropdown menu to customize many other aspects.

Sometimes, it becomes necessary to prevent themes from affecting one shape or a group of shapes, especially if they have important information that has to be presented in a particular way. To enable protection for a shape, click a shape or a group of shapes. This opens the Protection dialog box that allows to select which components of the shape to protect from being overridden.

We will focus on protecting the theming of the shape for now. So, select the checkboxes for Text, Format, From theme colors, From theme effects, From theme fonts and finally, From theme index. If you now select any theme from the Design tab, you will notice that the shape that is protected is unaffected by the theme change.

To reverse the changes, simply go to the Protection dialog box again, click None and finally click OK. Visio comes with a good selection of themes and variants to suit almost any need.

However, sometimes you might have the need to create a specific color scheme that reflects your organization. To do this, select a theme from the Design tab and choose a variant from the Variants section that closely matches to what you intend to create. In the New Theme Colors dialog box, give a name for the theme in the Name field.

 
 

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June 7, Archived from the original DOC on October 4, Archived from the original on October 20, Archived from the original on January 1, Archived from the original DOC on January 1, Archived from the original DOC on September 1, Archived from the original DOC on October 13, Archived from the original on October 15, Pearson Education.

ISBN Archived from the original on July 14, Archived from the original on October 14, July 5, Retrieved August 10, August 13, Office Home. Archived from the original on October 8, Archived from the original on October 10, For example, an Excel spreadsheet might have information about current flows through an electrical line.

Visio can be used to diagrammatically represent this and whenever the Excel data gets updated, the same will be reflected in the Visio diagram as well.

Newer versions of Visio from Visio onwards support. The latest version of Visio can also be purchased as part of the Office subscription with access to the online Visio viewer as well. Getting Visio as part of Office is the best choice in order to keep up-to-date with the latest features and enhancements.

Visio being part of the Office suite, is updated continuously throughout the year. If you have a qualifying Office subscription, you are entitled to regular updates automatically. Users who purchase the standalone versions of Visio do not however, receive feature updates and must upgrade separately to a higher version when released.

Data Visualizer helps in automatically creating process diagrams from Excel data. Premade or custom Excel templates containing information that fit into diagrams can be imported directly into Visio using the Data Visualizer and transformed into a Visio diagram.

Any changes made to the original Excel file reflects in the Visio diagram as well. The latest version of Visio enables reverse engineering of databases to create a visual representation of the database. The latest update to Visio for Office comes with many new standardized templates catering to industries such as business processes, software development, IT and education. These templates are supplied by both Microsoft and other third parties extending the capabilities of Visio Visio diagrams stored on SharePoint or OneDrive for business can now be opened for review in any modern web browser with Visio Online available with Office or in the free Visio Viewer app for the iPad.

In this chapter, we will learn about the user interface in Visio. It is important to properly understand the user interface to get the most out of this tool. The user interface of Visio is similar to that of other programs in the Office suite. You will be greeted with a Start page that lists some of the recent documents you have opened along with featured templates for creating common diagram types.

The top right corner shows the Microsoft account you are connected to, if you are an Office subscriber. Apart from the featured templates, you can also click Templates to browse through the template categories.

The document interface of Visio is similar to other Office programs such as Word or Excel. On the top, you have the Quick Access toolbar, which contains common commands, such as Save, Undo, and Redo. This can be customized as needed. Below the Quick Access toolbar is the familiar Office Ribbon. The Home tab lists common commands for working with the document. We will learn more about other tabs as we go along. On the left-hand pane, there is Shapes, which lists the common shapes that go well with the template.

To insert a shape, just click and drag the shape onto the canvas. There are many shapes available in Visio and we will get more familiar with them as we move ahead. Of course, you can also search for more shapes, if needed online, using the built-in search tool.

When you place shapes onto the canvas, you will see guides that help you align the shapes with respect to the objects already on the canvas. You also have a ruler on the top and left of the canvas. This gives a sense of perspective and lets you create perfectly aligned diagrams.

Shapes in Visio are basically vector graphics and as such you can enlarge or shrink the size as needed without loss of quality. You also get an idea of the relative dimensions of all the other shapes indicated by green arrows when you try to change the dimensions of any shape. To open a file in Visio, go to the File menu, which opens the backstage view and click Open. The Recent section lets you directly access the recent drawings that you have opened or saved.

Based on your setup, the Open menu lists some of the file locations that you can browse for Visio drawings. Alternatively, click Browse and select the Visio drawing from a local or network folder. Visio files have the extension. Once you open a Visio drawing, you will see that the user interface changes according to the drawing.

In the following example, we have opened an org chart and you can observe that the shape stencils corresponding to the org chart are now available in the Shapes pane.

In case of this file, you will also notice an Org Chart tab in the Ribbon that gives you additional options for working with the shapes in the chart, and also allows linking the shapes to data from external sources such as Excel. You can adjust the spacing between individual shapes and also change the height and width of all shapes in one click. The Compare command in the Organization Data section of the Org Chart tab lets you compare the contents of this org chart with another org chart or diagram open in Visio.

The output is generated as an HTML file, which lists out the similarities and differences between the two diagrams. You can show or hide elements in the UI to whatever suits you best. The Quick Access Toolbar allows you to easily add often-used commands so that they are always available within reach. Apart from the standard Undo, Redo, and Save commands, you can add additional buttons, such as a toggle between Touch and Mouse mode depending on your display by clicking the arrow icon in the Quick Access Toolbar.

You can also add more commands by clicking the option More Commands The Ribbon can be collapsed to allow more real estate for the canvas. You can reduce or expand the Shapes pane by clicking and dragging the edge of the pane inwards or outwards respectively. The Ribbon can be customized just like the Quick Access Toolbar but to do so, you need to navigate to the File menu and click Options.

Then click Customize Ribbon. You can select the tabs that you wish to display on the workspace. You can also create a new tab or group by clicking New Tab or New Group to accommodate the commands that you use frequently.

Visio has a few options for changing how you view the drawing. The View tab lists all the possible view options that you can use on the canvas.

We will look at some of the commands that are useful in changing view modes. Basically, slide snippets allow you to directly export a Visio diagram as a PowerPoint slide. To take a slide snippet, click the Slide Snippets Pane in the View tab to open it.

Then, select an area of the drawing that you want to export to a PowerPoint slide and click the Add button in the Slide Snippets Pane. Add a title in the Enter title here The Presentation Mode shows a full screen view of the drawing without any distractions.

This mode can also be toggled by pressing F5 on the keyboard. You can toggle between showing the vertical and horizontal rulers, the grid, and the guides by toggling the corresponding checkboxes in the Show area of the View tab. The scaling of the rulers and grid can also be adjusted. The grid allows to easily snap objects so that they are placed correctly on the canvas. The Zoom section comprises of commands that allow you to change the zoom levels of the canvas.

You can also fit the contents to window or adjust the contents to fill the page width. The Window section lists commands that allow to arrange multiple windows on your screen. You can directly open a new window or arrange windows side by side. You can also cascade windows for easy switching between them. SmartShapes provide contextual shapes which relate to the selected shape. SmartShapes are connected to the original shape and the connector also moves whenever the SmartShape is moved.

Start with a blank document in this case a flowchart diagram. You will notice that the Shapes pane has different shapes that are applicable to flowcharts. Click and drag a shape onto the empty canvas. You can resize or rotate the shape as desired. You can even align the shape with the help of the alignment guides. When you drag a shape onto the canvas, you will notice that there are four arrows along the shape.

Hovering over any of these arrows will show possible shapes that can be created and linked to this shape. Click the desired shape to create the shape. You will also notice that the shape is automatically connected to the initial shape. If you were to drag the shape manually, you will need to connect it manually as well. The connections between the shapes are dynamic and they will move in relation to the placement of the shape. The SmartShape arrow lists the first four shapes for the diagram that are seen in the Shapes pane.

You might want to customize which shapes appear in the four SmartShape options depending on your workflow. To set the shapes that you prefer as SmartShapes, first select the desired shape in the Shapes pane and drag it to one of the first four shapes within the pane. In this example, let us assume that the Database shape needs to be in the first four. Click and drag the Database shape into one of the first four positions. SmartShapes allows to automatically connect shapes.

If you want to connect shapes that are not directly related, you can manually connect them. To manually connect shapes, click the Connector tool in the Tools section of the Home tab. The mouse pointer now changes into a connector. Draw a connecting line from the originating shape to the destination.

You will notice a dotted line representing the connector. You can either glue this connector to the connection point or glue it to the destination shape. Gluing it to the shape will enable you to move the shape to a different location on the canvas along with the connector.

Click the Pointer Tool in the Tools section of the Home tab to return the mouse pointer back to normal. Newer versions of Visio have built-in intelligence to help you place shapes between other shapes. Visio automatically adds the required spacing and connectors to ensure that the new shape is inserted in the correct position. To insert a shape between two shapes, drag the new shape in between the desired shapes, till you see green squares on the connectors and release the mouse.

The new shape will be inserted with equal spacing and appropriate connections. Often, inserting and deleting shapes can disturb the alignment of the diagram. It can also make the elements of the diagram space out unevenly. To get around this, Visio provides tools that automatically align and space the shapes in your diagram so that it looks perfect. To automatically align and space shapes in a diagram, go to the Position dropdown menu in the Arrange section of the Home tab.

You can also hover the mouse on these commands to preview how the diagram would look after alignment. Visio provides options for automatically changing the layout of the diagram with the ReLayout Page command. The Re-Layout Page command provides commonly used layouts.

You can also customize some of the aspects of the layout as needed. Open the diagram and navigate to the Design tab on the Ribbon.

Click the Re-Layout Page dropdown menu and select a layout as needed. You will see that the diagram now changes to the selected layout. You can also preview the look before clicking by hovering the mouse over the layout style. This opens a dialog box in which you can configure the layout properties.

You can change the spacing between the shapes by manually changing the values in the Spacing field. You can also change the appearance of the connectors to curved by selecting Curved in the Appearance dropdown menu. Remember to select the Apply routing style to connectors checkbox to be able to change the appearance of the connectors. Visio allows inserting text either within the shapes or in the document. You also get to do text formatting just like any other text editor.

It is easy to insert text within a shape. Just double-click within a shape to type the text. Notice that Visio automatically zooms into the shape to enable typing and zooms out when you click outside the shape. To insert a text in a document such as a heading for the chart, click the Text Box dropdown menu in the Insert tab on the Ribbon and select either horizontal or vertical text box. Backgrounds are inserted using pages called background pages.

Background pages can contain graphics or text such as copyright info and other information. Background pages are always separate but appear overlaid on the main page.

You can change the background of a document by choosing from preset backgrounds or using your own background template. To insert a background, click the Background dropdown menu from the Design tab on the Ribbon and choose a background preset.

This creates a new page in addition to the diagram page. You can right-click the newly created background page to rename it. The new background will be automatically applied to all newly created pages in the document. Apart from the shapes that are part of the diagram, you can add your own images to the document.

Images can come from any online or offline source. If you add an image to the background page, the image will appear on all the pages in the document. To insert your images or graphics, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and select from any of the commands in the Illustrations section.

It can be a picture on your local drive, an online source, a chart or even a CAD drawing. You can also replicate the picture on all the pages by inserting the picture in a background page. To do this, select the background page and insert the picture as described above.

Drag and resize the picture as needed. Now, navigate to the page containing the diagram and you will find that the picture appears on that page and any other subsequent pages that are added. Sometimes, you might want to combine two or more elements of the diagram together. You can use containers to group shapes that are dependent on each other.

Callouts help in inserting more text outside the shape. Callouts are always connected to the shape and move along with it. To insert a container, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Container dropdown menu in the Diagram Parts section. You will see that there are many designs to choose from for the container.

Once you select a design, you can drag the container around the grouped shapes. Release the mouse to lock the container. The container also contains an area for typing text. Double-click the heading area to type the text.

Select the shape for which you want to use the callout. To insert a callout, go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click the Callout dropdown menu in the Diagram Parts section.

You will see that there are many designs to choose from for the callout. Select a design appropriate for the callout. The callout will appear connected to the selected shape. In this example, we have added a callout for the Back to Research process called Extensive Research. The callout is linked to the shape and can be moved about anywhere in the drawing, however it will always stay connected to the shape. Visio will zoom in when you click the callout to enable typing and will zoom out when clicked outside the callout.

This text now needs to be converted into a hyperlink. To do so, select the text in the text box and in the Insert tab again. Click Link to open the Hyperlinks dialog box. You can specify the links to websites or a local file on your computer. Click OK to convert the selected text into a hyperlink. You can directly hyperlink a text or a shape to a file. Double-clicking the text or shape opens the hyperlinked file. The procedure is similar to hyperlinking a website.

Select the shape or text that you want to create a hyperlink for and click the Link button in the Insert tab of the Ribbon. In the Hyperlinks dialog box, click Browse… adjacent to the Address field and click Local File… to browse to the location of the file. Make sure that the Use relative path for hyperlink box is selected to ensure that the file path is updated automatically when you change the file location. Visio also makes it possible to hyperlink pages in a multi-page document so that clicking the link will directly take you to the linked page.

To hyperlink pages, select a text or shape to be linked to and click Links in the Insert tab in the Ribbon. In the Hyperlinks dialog box, make sure to click Browse… adjacent to the Sub-address field. Select the destination page in the Page field.

You can also set a default zoom level in the Zoom dropdown menu so that navigating to the linked page opens it at the desired zoom. You need not be content with the default theme. Visio allows to customize the theme and overall look of the document. To apply a theme, go to the Design tab and choose from any of the many theme options available.

Once you click any of the available themes, the theme will be applied to the document. You can further personalize it by selecting from one of the many options in the Variants section. The Variants section allows you to customize theme colors as needed. Clicking the dropdown menu in the Variants section allows to customize the theme colors, effects, and connectors.

It opens the New Theme Colors dialog box, which allows to customize each of the accents in the theme. If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, you should be right at home in Visio with respect to formatting text. You can format titles and text within shapes. You can also use the Format Painter command to copy formatting and paste it into another shape or text box. To format the text, select the text box containing the text or highlight the text itself.

Then, choose from the options available in the Font and Paragraph sections of the Home tab. You can change the font, size, color, and paragraph alignment. If you want to change the font styles in a shape, just double-click the shape to select the text within the shape and change the font styles as desired.

You can also format the shapes to give them a more professional or casual look as desired. To format shapes, select the shape in the diagram and format using the options available in the Shape Styles section. You can select predefined shape styles or you can customize the shape using the Fill dropdown menu. To adjust the color of the shape border, select a color from the Line dropdown menu. The Effects menu allows to add special effects to your shape such as drop shadows or 3D rotations.

Visio makes it easy to format the shape outlines and the connectors. You might be looking to format a shape outline to make it stand out from the rest of the shapes or to highlight something important. To format a shape outline, click the shape or hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and select multiple shapes. This will open a Format Shape flyout. In the Line section, select the options you need to customize the shape outline.

You can change the color of the shape outline, increase the width to add more weight, change the rounding, and a whole lot more. You can also create gradients for the line to suit the diagram. Like shape outlines, connectors can also be formatted as needed.

To format a connector, select the connector in the diagram and bring up the Format Shape pane by going to the Line dropdown menu and clicking Line Options In the Line section of the Format Shapes pane, select the Dash type of your choice to change the connector pattern. You can also change the color of the connector and adjust the transparency levels as needed.

Visio comes with visual aids to help align and structure the elements in the diagram so that it appears great both on-screen and in print. The main visual aids available include rulers, grids, and guides. Rulers help in providing perspective to the elements in the diagram.

They help orient the shapes to attain a consistent and clean look. Rulers can be switched off or on with a simple checkbox in the Show section of the View tab. When you move a shape, you will notice that there are 3 dotted lines shown in the following example in red rectangles on both the vertical and horizontal rulers. These 3 dotted lines denote the left, middle, and right parts of the diagram.

When you drag the shape vertically or horizontally, these 3 dotted lines help position the shape exactly at the place you need. Just like rulers, guides help in orienting different shapes of the diagram properly. You can create any number of guides from both the vertical and horizontal rulers.

To create a guide, simply drag a line from either the vertical or horizontal rulers. Guides are represented by lines, which appear thick when selected.

You can delete a guide by simply selecting the guide and pressing the Delete key on the keyboard. Uncheck the Guides checkbox in the View tab to remove all the guides from view. Dragging a shape onto a guide will enable you to snap the shape to the guide.

When a shape is snapped to a guide, it moves along with the guide. Grids not only help to align shapes within the drawing but can also be an important measurement tool.

Grids comprise of square boxes of defined area, which can be adjusted. Therefore, grids help you have an estimate of the likely area occupied by the shape, which allows you to size the shapes as needed. You can also customize the size of each grid by adjusting the spacing between the grids. To do so, click the small downward facing arrow to the bottom-right of the Show section in the View tab.

Apart from commonly used visual aids such as the ruler, guides, and grids, Visio also comes with few other visual aids to help you better organize your diagram. One of the advantages of using SmartShapes is the ability to quickly and easily connect a shape to the top four favorite shapes.

AutoConnect helps to quickly select a shape from the top four and instantly establish a connection to the new shape. Sometimes, you might not need this feature.

In such cases, you can disable the AutoConnect feature by simply unchecking the AutoConnect checkbox from the Visual Aids section of the View tab. When the AutoConnect checkbox is unchecked, the SmartShapes and connecting arrows do not appear when a shape is selected.

Dynamic grid provides a relative alignment cue when you insert a new shape. When the Dynamic Grid option is turned on, you will see guides and indicators relative to the shape. Dynamic Grid can be used in conjunction with the actual Grid. The actual Grid is more of an absolute measurement and should be considered when precise measurements are of importance in deciding the placement of the shapes.

The Dynamic Grid is more of a relative measurement. In the above example, we see that turning on the Dynamic Grid allows us to see the relative distance of the new shape with respect to pre-existing shapes. Connection Points help in connecting shapes to specific points along the surface of a shape. For example, a shape can have four Connection Points along its perimeter to which connectors can attach to.

Turning on Connection Points help to connect shapes precisely at defined connection points. Connection Points can be identified by green squares that appear on all sides of the shape. If you want to connect to the shape directly rather than to a connection point on the shape, uncheck the Connection Points checkbox in the View tab of the ribbon.

Task Panes provide additional functionality to the user interface. You can use task panes to customize or add parameters to an object. As the future of work unfolds, industry analysts. Just last month, we released our Annual Work Trend Index to better understand how work has changed over the past two years. With rising staff shortages and increasing costs from security breaches, it is time to review the business case for modernizing your endpoint management.

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