Visio 2007 For Dummies

by Mueller, John Paul; Walkowski, Debbie

• ISBN13: 9780470089835
• ISBN10: 0470089830
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-12-18
• Publisher: For Dummies

Summary

Reveal your inner business artist with Visio Turn your ideas into diagrams and drawings with Visio's stencils and templates If you have an idea you want to get down on electronic paper, Visio 2007 is for you, and so is this book! They're both flexible and user-friendly. Here's how to use Visio to capture ideas from simple to intricate, update data in a drawing with a single click, add and manipulate text, work with connectors, and more. Discover how to Create business, engineering, software, or network diagrams Format an entire drawing using themes Analyze "what-if" scenarios with PivotDiagrams Produce layered multipage drawings Save drawings to publish on the Web

Author Biography

John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 70 books and over 300 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads-down programming. Some of his current books include a Windows power optimization book, a book on .NET security, and books on Amazon Web Services, Google Web Services, and eBay Web Services. His technical editing skills have helped more than 51 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. John has provided technical editing services to both Data Based Advisor and Coast Compute magazines. He’s also contributed articles to magazines like DevSource, InformIT, Informant, DevX, SQL Server Professional, Visual C++ Developer, Hard Core Visual Basic, asp.netPRO, Software Test and Performance, and Visual Basic Developer.
When John isn’t working at the computer, you can find him in his workshop. He’s an avid woodworker and candle maker. On any given afternoon, you can find him working at a lathe or putting the finishing touches on a bookcase. He also likes making glycerin soap and candles, which comes in handy for gift baskets. You can reach John on the Internet at [e-mail]. John is also setting up a Web site at http://www.mwt.net/~jmueller/; feel free to look and make suggestions on how he can improve it. Check out his weekly blog at http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/id/AQOA2QP4X1YWP.

Debbie Walkowski has worked in the computer industry for more than 20 years in a variety of positions from sales and marketing to teaching and training. For the last 14 years, she has made writing her primary focus. Her company, the Writing Works, specializes in writing computer self-help books and providing writing services to companies such as Microsoft Corporation, Hewlett-Packard (formerly Digital Equipment Corporation), and AT&T Wireless Communications. She has authored 18 books on popular computer software, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Windows, Visio, Quicken, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
About This Book	p. 1
Conventions Used in This Book	p. 2
What You're Not to Read	p. 2
Foolish Assumptions	p. 3
How This Book Is Organized	p. 3
Starting with Visio 2007 Basics	p. 3
Creating Visio Drawings	p. 4
Taking Your Drawings to the Next Level	p. 4
Advancing Your Knowledge of Visio	p. 4
The Part of Tens	p. 4
About the Web Site	p. 5
Icons Used in This Book	p. 5
Where to Go from Here	p. 6
Starting with Visio 2007 Basics	p. 7
Visio 101	p. 9
Getting the Scoop on Visio	p. 9
Comparing Visio products	p. 10
A quick peek at some Visio features	p. 11
What's new in Visio 2007?	p. 13
Familiarizing Yourself with Visio Lingo	p. 15
Understanding the Vista Difference	p. 16
The graphical interface difference	p. 16
Helpful user interface changes	p. 16
Understanding the security features	p. 17
Jumping Head First into Visio	p. 18
Getting familiar with the Visio screen	p. 20
Checking out the menus	p. 21
Working with toolbars	p. 22
Getting Help When You Need It	p. 25
Using general help	p. 25
Don't forget Tooltips	p. 26
Closing Visio	p. 27
Creating and Saving a Simple Visio Drawing	p. 29
Creating a Drawing the Standard Way	p. 29
Understanding the Visio Drawing Categories	p. 32
Working with Stencils	p. 53
Moving and arranging stencils	p. 53
Closing stencils	p. 54
Opening additional stencils	p. 54
Selecting a Pointer Tool Button	p. 56
Working with Shapes	p. 56
Adding a shape to a drawing	p. 57
Selecting a shape	p. 57
Selecting more than one shape at a time	p. 58
Navigating through a Drawing	p. 59
Zeroing In on a Drawing	p. 60
Using the Zoom button	p. 60
Using the Pan & Zoom window	p. 61
Using Drawing Explorer	p. 62
Saving Drawings	p. 64
Saving a drawing the first time	p. 64
Setting up AutoSave	p. 64
Saving a drawing as a template	p. 66
Saving a drawing in another file format	p. 66
Using a Visio Wizard to Create a Drawing	p. 67
Opening Drawings	p. 67
Printing Visio Drawings	p. 69
Understanding How Visio Prints	p. 69
Preparing to Print	p. 70
Checking the printer paper and drawing page sizes	p. 70
Previewing your drawing	p. 73
A clear view in Print Preview	p. 74
Printing Your Drawing	p. 76
Adding Headers and Footers to a Drawing	p. 77
Printing Gridlines	p. 80
Printing Part of a Drawing	p. 80
Reducing and Enlarging Printed Drawings	p. 81
Altering the print scale of a drawing	p. 81
Printing oversized drawings	p. 82
Using online printing services	p. 83
Printing to scale	p. 84
Setting Shapes Not to Print	p. 85
Printing Reviewers' Comments	p. 86
Printing a Background Separately	p. 87
Printing Layers Separately	p. 88
Creating Vislo Drawings	p. 89
Discovering What Visio Shapes Are All About	p. 91
Discovering What's in a Shape	p. 92
Examining open and closed shapes	p. 93
Comparing one-and two-dimensional shapes	p. 94
Displaying all of the shape handles	p. 95
Working with Shapes	p. 96
Moving shapes	p. 97
Nudging shapes	p. 98
Copying and pasting shapes	p. 98
Sizing up your shapes	p. 99
Deleting shapes	p. 101
Controlling Shapes	p. 101
Adjusting shapes using control handles	p. 103
Adjusting shapes using control points	p. 105
Shaping corners	p. 106
Rotating shapes into place	p. 107
Modifying arcs using eccentricity handles	p. 107
Using connection points	p. 108
Using automatic connection points	p. 110
Finding the Shapes You Want	p. 111
Jazzing Up Your Drawings	p. 113
Loading stencils from other templates	p. 114
Using the Visio Extras stencil shapes	p. 114
Using themes	p. 115
Adding Text to Your Drawings	p. 119
Understanding Text Blocks	p. 119
Adding Text to a Drawing	p. 120
Working with Text and Text Blocks	p. 123
Editing text	p. 123
Copying and pasting text	p. 124
Moving a text block	p. 125
Resizing a text block	p. 126
Changing alignment	p. 127
Adjusting margins	p. 131
Using tabs in a text block	p. 132
Creating buUeted lists	p. 135
Creating numbered lists	p. 136
Setting the indentation and spacing of text	p. 138
Changing the Way Your Text Looks	p. 139
Changing the font, size, color, and style of text	p. 139
Choosing a background color for a text block	p. 142
Painting the formatting to other text	p. 143
Rotating text	p. 143
Connecting Shapes	p. 145
Discovering Connectors	p. 145
Working with Connection Points	p. 148
Adding connection points to a shape	p. 148
Deleting a connection point	p. 149
Using the automatic connection feature	p. 149
Applying Glue (without the Mess)	p. 150
Choosing static or dynamic glue	p. 151
Identifying glue types	p. 152
Switching from one glue to the other	p. 153
Setting glue options	p. 154
Gluing Connectors to Shapes	p. 155
Connecting shapes as you drag them	p. 155
Drawing connectors using the Connector Tool	p. 156
Saving time with the Connect Shapes feature	p. 158
Choosing a custom connector to connect shapes	p. 158
Dragging connector shapes into your drawing	p. 160
Moving connectors	p. 161
Managing Connectors	p. 162
Handling connectors that cross paths	p. 162
Performing changes on single connections quickly	p. 164
Laying Out Shapes Automatically	p. 164
Taking Your Drawings to the Next Level	p. 167
Perfecting Your Drawings	p. 169
All about Measurements and Placement Tools	p. 170
Using the Drawing Grid	p. 173
Using Dynamic Grid	p. 175
Setting Drawing Scale	p. 175
Snapping Shapes into Place	p. 178
Measuring Up with Rulers	p. 181
Using Guide Lines and Guide Points	p. 184
Creating guide lines	p. 185
Creating guide points	p. 186
Aligning and Distributing Shapes	p. 187
Creating and Customizing Shapes	p. 191
Creating Unique Shapes the Fun Way	p. 192
Uniting shapes	p. 194
Combining shapes	p. 195
Fragmenting shapes	p. 195
Intersecting shapes	p. 197
Subtracting shapes	p. 197
Restacking shapes	p. 198
Drawing Your Own Shapes	p. 200
Drawing with the Line Tool	p. 200
Drawing with the Pencil Tool	p. 202
Drawing with the Arc Tool	p. 203
Creating irregular shapes with the Freeform Tool	p. 204
Creating shapes with the Ellipse Tool and Rectangle Tool	p. 204
Manipulating Shapes	p. 205
Moving and adding vertices	p. 206
Moving control points	p. 208
Rotating shapes	p. 209
Flipping shapes	p. 212
Adding Style to Your Shapes	p. 213
Changing line style	p. 213
Adding fill color, pattern, and shadow	p. 216
Copying formats	p. 218
Reformatting a shape	p. 218
Creating new theme colors	p. 218
Creating new theme effects	p. 220
Copying new themes	p. 221
Managing Shapes by Grouping	p. 223
Creating groups	p. 223
Editing a group	p. 224
Adding a shape to a group	p. 225
Removing a shape from a group	p. 225
Adding text to grouped shapes	p. 225
Working with Pages	p. 227
The Role of the Template	p. 227
Reorienting a Page	p. 228
Setting a Page Size	p. 230
Adding and Deleting Pages in a Drawing	p. 233
Working with Multiple Pages	p. 237
Getting from one page to another	p. 238
Displaying multiple pages at once	p. 238
Reordering pages	p. 239
Renaming Pages	p. 240
Viewing on the Big Screen	p. 240
What's in a Background?	p. 242
Creating and assigning a background page	p. 243
Unassigning a background page	p. 244
Displaying a background page	p. 245
Editing a background page	p. 245
Using a background shape	p. 245
Rotating Pages	p. 246
Layering Your Drawings	p. 249
Getting the Essential Facts on Layers and Layering	p. 250
Working with Layers	p. 252
Toolbars for working with layers	p. 253
Adding a layer and removing one	p. 253
Renaming a layer	p. 255
Hiding a layer	p. 256
Assigning Shapes to Layers	p. 256
Determining which layer a shape is assigned to	p. 258
Activating layers!	p. 258
Using Layers on Background Pages	p. 259
Protecting Layers from Changes	p. 259
Assigning a Color to a Layer	p. 260
Selecting Layers to Print	p. 262
Snap and Glue Options for Layers	p. 263
Advancinq our Knowledqe of Visio	p. 265
Creating Stencils, Master Shapes, and Templates	p. 267
Working with Stencils	p. 267
Using the Stencil toolbar	p. 268
Using a Document Stencil	p. 270
Creating a custom stencil	p. 271
Naming master shapes on a custom stencil	p. 274
Adding master shapes to a custom stencil	p. 276
Deleting master shapes from a custom stencil	p. 277
Creating a custom icon	p. 277
Creating a Custom Template	p. 278
Managing Shape information. Behavior, and Protection	p. 281
Storing Data in Visio Shapes	p. 281
Entering custom shape data	p. 284
Editing custom property fields	p. 285
Reporting on Data Stored in Visio Shapes	p. 291
Using a predefined report	p. 292
Creating a custom report	p. 294
Customizing Shape Behavior	p. 304
Changing a shape from 2-D to 1-D	p. 304
Setting a shape's group behavior	p. 306
Setting a shape's double-click behavior	p. 306
Protecting Your Work	p. 308
Preventing shapes from being changed	p. 308
Keeping drawings secure	p. 310
Marking Up Drawings for Review	p. 313
Discovering Markup Tools	p. 314
Adding Comments to a Drawing	p. 315
How Markup Tracking Works	p. 316
Working with Markup	p. 318
Using the Reviewing toolbar and the task pane	p. 318
Adding markup to a drawing	p. 319
Viewing markup in a drawing	p. 320
Incorporating markup changes in a drawing	p. 321
Deleting markup	p. 323
Using Digital Ink	p. 324
Selecting an ink tool	p. 325
Using ink tools	p. 325
Changing digital ink shapes to geometry	p. 327
Changing digital-ink shapes to text	p. 327
Using Visio with Other Programs	p. 329
Using Files from Other Programs in Visio	p. 330
Generating Drawings from Data Stored in Non-Visio Files	p. 331
Creating an organization chart from existing data	p. 332
Creating a Gantt chart by importing data	p. 338
Creating a calendar by importing Outlook appointments	p. 341
Incorporating Visio Shapes and Drawings in Non-Visio Documents	p. 343
Linking shapes and drawings	p. 344
Embedding shapes in drawings	p. 345
Hyperlinking shapes and drawings	p. 346
Exporting and importing shapes and drawings	p. 346
Using Visio Viewer to Share Visio Drawings	p. 348
Saving Visio Drawings for the Web	p. 348
Publishing Your Drawing in XPS Format	p. 350
Creating Data Links to SQL Server and Spreadsheets	p. 350
Using the Data Link feature	p. 351
Using the Data Graphics feature	p. 353
Working with the PivotDiagram feature	p. 355
The Part of lens	p. 357
Ten Common Tasks in Visio	p. 359
Rotating Shapes to a Specific Angle	p. 359
Centering a Drawing before Printing	p. 360
Resizing a Page to Fit the Content of a Drawing	p. 360
Creating a Drawing That Spans Several Pages	p. 361
Saving a Company Logo as a Stencil Shape	p. 361
Creating and Adding a Background Design to a Drawing	p. 361
Adjusting the Transparency of Shapes and Text in a Drawing	p. 362
Adding the Same Shape or Image to All Pages in a Drawing	p. 362
Unlocking a Shape	p. 363
Copying Formatting from One Shape to Another	p. 363
Ten Web Sites Devoted to Visio	p. 365
VisioCafe	p. 365
IMicrosoft Visio	p. 366
Design-Drawing	p. 366
Visio The Blog	p. 367
Cisco Systems	p. 367
Dell	p. 367
Microsoft Visio Home Page	p. 368
NickFinck	p. 368
ConceptDraw	p. 368
ABC Amber Conversion and IVIerging Software	p. 369
Index	p. 371
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