Super Utilities Reference - Unmanaged Visio

Visio Super Utilities adds a new ribbon to Microsoft Visio

Each section of the ribbon (Document, Page, Shape, Stencil etc.) gives
you a selection of tools that I’ve developed over the years. I hope you
also find them useful.

Document utilities

Close all documents without saving

This will close all the currently open documents. If there are unsaved
changes then they will be lost. Equivalent to a "No to All" response
when asked to save documents when Visio closes. When you are creating
documents by automation and have 83 unwanted but unsaved documents then
you may realise how useful this is!

Mark all documents saved

When creating a large number of documents, if the documents are not
saved or marked as saved then when you want to exit from Visio without
saving the documents, Visio will ask whether you want to save each
unsaved document. If you have 100 unsaved documents open then this is
inconvenient to say the least.

By marking all documents saved, you may exit from Visio without being
asked to save the documents.

Export Documents/Pages as images

If you need to import Visio documents into a word processor, send them
by email or prepare images for a web page then the standard Visio menu
options only allow you to save one page at a time.

SuperUtils enables you to export all the pages of the current document
or of all the open documents to be saved as images.

The \’Export File Path\’ is where the images get saved, use the yellow
\’change folder\’ dialog box to change this path (you can also create
new folders here).

The \’Export image name\’ options allow you to choose the name created
for the image. It can be either the document name followed by the page
name (with options of space or underline as separator), or just the page
name by itself. When exporting images from multiple documents be careful
with this option as any duplicate page names will overwrite a page image
of the same name.

The \’Export as image type\’ can be set to one of (BMP, DWG, DXF, EMF,
EMZ, GIF, JPG, PNG, SVG, SVGZ, TIF, WMF).

Alternative webpage export

The built-in web page export available in Visio is very powerful and has
some very nice features. However, the output it produces can be very
complicated and if it is to be incorporated into other web pages with
manual editing then an alternative, simpler output may be useful.

Also, we\’ve added a few features we find useful. Please be aware though
that it is very easy to create Visio pages with names that are not very
friendly for webpages i.e. pages can contain \’?\’, \’\<\’, \’>\’ and
so forth as well as names containing Unicode characters. This utility
does not cope at all well with names like this.

Save File Path The folder for all output files. use the yellow
\’change folder\’ dialog box to change this path (you can also create
new folders here).

Include HTML Head File Include the contents of this file before the
HTML \</head> tag.

Include Header File Include the contents of this file before the
images.

Include Footer File Include the contents of this file after all the
images.

File Type Choose one of htm, html or php.

Image Type Choose one of GIF, JPG, PNG or SVG. SVG requires that you
have an SVG plug-in installed in your browser.

Page Output One web page per Visio page or the whole lot in one
file.

HTML/XHTML Choose the type of output required.

Use Tables Whether to use a table to locate the image files.

Separator between images Adds a horizontal separator line between
each image.

Shape Text Export (current document)

This feature reads all the text in each shape on all pages within the
current document and outputs it to the dialog box.

From here all the text can be read and saved if required.

Shapes in Document Report

A document-wide version of the Shapes on Page
Report but repeats for each page in the document and provides a total shape
count for all pages at the end.

Count Shapes in Document

Displays a list of the counts of all the different shapes on all the
pages within a document.

A page version of this is available at Count Shapes on
Page.

Word Count Report

This feature counts all the words in each shape and page of the current
document, displaying a total for each page and a total for the whole
document, however complex the shape, remembering that shapes can be
groups of other shapes to any depth.

Copy Document to Other Document (Document Merge)

This copies all the pages of the current document into another open
document. To use this feature open both documents, go to the document
you wish to copy from, select "Copy Document to Other Document" from the
SuperUtils → Document menu, from the dialog box select the document
where you want to copy to and select OK. All the pages will be copied to
that document.

Copy and merge
limitations

Copying and merging some pages and documents may not work correctly when
the positioning of shapes on a page is under the control of Visio or an
add-on within Visio. Various of the built-in diagram types within Visio
are of this type:

Organization Chart
Cross-functional Flowchart
Maps and Floor Plans
Calendar
Gantt Chart
Pert Chart
Timeline

Shape position, shape name, connections and other factors can all be
under the control of Visio, so copying a diagram may result in anything
from small imperfections to a total mess. There is nothing that can be
done about this.

Compare Documents

A document-wide version of Compare
Pages. If
both documents have the same number of pages then a page-by-page compare
is performed, otherwise the page names are compared to try to identify
where the first difference may be found.

Once you have an idea about which pages might be different, use the Page
→ Compare Pages utility to find how the pages differ.

List all open Documents

When dealing with a large number of documents, the built-in Visio method
of selecting which document to view is far from ideal. Use the "List all
open Documents" menu to select which document to view. It provides the
document type and name to allow you to clearly see all the current
documents that are open. The current document is highlighted. Note that
if there are a very large number of documents then it can take a few
seconds to populate the list.

To save the list of documents in a text file, use the \’Save\’ button.

Hyperlink Report/Check

This feature reads all the shapes on the current page or document and
outputs a list of all the hyperlinks within these shapes. It also takes
into account grouped shapes where different parts of a shape may contain
hyperlinks.

Hyperlink Check tests the existence of all the linked documents, whether
internal or on the internet.

Layers Report/Check

This feature reports all the layers used on the current page or document
and outputs a list of all the layer names. It also checks that the layer
Name and NameU are both set and whether there is any difference between
the two.

Document Comments Report

This generates a report on all comments that exist in the current
document. Copy the report by selecting the text and use the right-click
Copy menu. The report can also be saved to a file from the Save Text
button.

Convert Comments to Text Boxes

Comments that have been added to a Visio page or document cannot be
selected, searched, spellchecked or similar. Now you can convert
comments into text boxes and use them in the same way as any other
shape.

The action of converting the comments into text boxes can be undone
using the Edit → Undo menu.

Copy and Paste

Copy, Paste and Delete Shapedata

You can use this utility to copy Shapedata from one shape (or master),
or sub-shape to another or a page. Just select the shape from which you
want to copy and use the SuperUtils → Shape → Copy → Shapedata menu,
then select the shape or shapes to which you wish to copy these
properties and use the SuperUtils → Shape → Paste → Shapedata menu. Or
you can paste the Shapedata to a page with the SuperUtils → Page → Paste
→ Shapedata menu. Once a set of Shapedata has been copied they can be
used to paste many times to as many shapes or pages as you want.

You can even paste multiple times to the same shape but Visio will
allocate a new name to any duplicate row as a shape cannot have two rows
with the same name.

The properties are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you
can use normal copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
Shapedata.

You can also delete the Shapedata from one or more shapes (or masters)
using the SuperUtils → Shape → Delete → Shapedata menu.

Copy, Paste and Delete User-defined Cells

You can copy user-defined cells from one shape (or master) to another or
to a page.

Once a set of user-defined cells has been copied they can be used to
paste many times to as many shapes or pages as you want.

The cells are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you can use
the standard copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
user-defined cells.

This utility can also be used to delete all the user-defined cells for
any number of shapes on a page.

Export All Images

You can export all embedded media files that are contained in the Visio
file to a folder. For example, all photos from the Org Chat diagram.

The file must be saved for this to work.

When using this command, you are prompted to select the target folder.
After you confirm your selection, the embedded images are exported to
that folder, and it is opened in Windows Explorer.

Page utilities

Export Pages as images

See section for Documents

Alternative webpage export

See section for Documents

Shapes on Page

Sometimes when developing Visio applications you are left wondering why
a certain shape on a page isn\’t being recognised. This utility will
list all the shapes on the current page.

You can select the items to be listed from the Options dialog, this will
enable you to display, for example, just a list of all the shape names
on the page.

The output from this utility can be saved to a text file using the "Save
Text" button.

A document-wide version of this can be found at Shapes in Document
Report.

Count Shapes on Page

Displays a list of the counts of all the different shapes on a page.

A document-wide version of this is available at Count Shapes in
Document.

Word Count Report

See section for Documents

Shape Text Export (current page)

This feature reads all the text in each shape on the current page and
outputs it to the dialog box.

From here all the text can be read and saved if required.

Page Report

Reports upon different values for the Name, NameU and ID properties of
all the pages in the current document.

Checks page names for leading and trailing spaces and asks if you wish
to correct this potential problem. If the page has its invisible
attribute set then you will be asked if you want to make the page
visible.

Pagesheet Shapedata Report

A problem that we had in the past was that a Pagesheet Shapedata
property had not been set correctly but this couldn\’t be seen in the
standard Shapesheet. It turned out that the property Name and LocalName
were different. This utility may help you find similar problems.

Compare Pages

Select the document and/or page to compare with the current page and
list the differences. Each page must have the same number of shapes.

For a document-wide version see Compare
Documents.

Compare Page Properties

Sometimes you might just want to compare the properties of two pages as
this could show up a reason why routing or shape placement is different.

Copy Current Page

Duplicate Page / Copy Page to other Document / Copy Current Page as New Document

This will copy everything* in and on the current page and copy it to:

a new page in the current document (i.e. duplicate page)
copy the page into another document (this must be another document
opened in Visio)
or copy it into a brand new document
Visio decides on the name of the new page; you may want to rename it.
There are potential problems with copying a whole page:
Other add-ons may have an effect on pages being created and shapes
being dropped on a page which may interfere with the operation of
this add-on.

However, in most cases this feature will make a complete copy of a page.
Please let us know of any special problems that you find with this.

Duplicate page asks how many duplicates should be made using a dialog
similar to "Add new pages" below. Once you\’ve copied a page to another
or a new document you can then duplicate it by Duplicate Page.

Please Note: Page Annotations are not copied on purpose as these are
normally used to indicate that a page has been commented or reviewed by
other people.

Copy all Pages to Separate Documents

With this menu you can split a document of n pages into n separate
documents. You will be asked if you want to copy over each page\’s name,
if not then each page will be given the default new page name allocated
by Visio (this is language dependant, the English language version being
"Page-1").

Add multiple new pages

Normally, adding new pages to a Visio document can only be done 1 page
at a time, if you want to add 25 new pages then it\’ll take you a long
time.

This utility will allow you add as many pages as you want in one simple
operation. No range checking is done on the number of pages you want to
add except only 3 digits are allowed.

The addition of multiple new pages can be undone from the Edit → Undo
menu.

List/Goto Page

When dealing with a document containing a large number of pages, the
built-in Visio method of selecting which page to view is far from ideal.

Use the \’List/Goto Page\’ menu to select which page to view. The
current page is highlighted.

The list of pages is fully Unicode compatible. Note that if there are a
very large number of pages then it can take a few seconds to populate
the list.

To save the list of pages in a text file, use the \’Save\’ button.

Rename Pages

Renaming a large number of pages can be a long job. If all the pages
need to be renamed sequentially then use this utility.

The example dialog will rename all the pages in the current document as
"page-42", "page-43", "page-44" etc. The start text is always used as
the first part of the new name and the end text is always placed at the
end (seem logical?) – either or both may be left blank. The Page number
auto-increments for each page from the starting point that you define,
empty is taken to be 0. However, if the page number is negative then the
page number will auto-decrement i.e. your pages will be renamed
"page-42", "page-41", "page-40" etc.

The page renaming can be undone in one unit using the Edit → Undo menu.

Hyperlink Report/Check

Hyperlink Check tests the existence of all the linked documents, whether
internal or on the internet.

Layers Report/Check

Page Comments Report

This displays a report of all comments made on a page, these comments
can be copied and pasted into another document by selecting the text and
right-click menu. The report can also be saved to a file from the Save
Text button.

Convert Comments to Text Boxes

The action of converting the comments into text boxes can be undone
using the Edit → Undo menu.

Copy, Paste and Delete

Copy, Paste and Delete Shapedata

You can even paste multiple times to the same shape but Visio will
allocate a new name to any duplicate row as a shape cannot have two rows
with the same name.

The properties are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you
can use normal copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
Shapedata.

You can also delete the Shapedata from one or more shapes (or masters)
using the SuperUtils → Shape → Delete → Shapedata menu.

Copy, Paste and Delete User-defined Cells

You can copy user-defined cells from one shape (or master) to another or
to a page.

Once a set of user-defined cells has been copied they can be used to
paste many times to as many shapes or pages as you want.

The cells are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you can use
the standard copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
user-defined cells.

This utility can also be used to delete all the user-defined cells for
any number of shapes on a page.

Copy, Paste and Delete Action Cells

You can copy action cells from one shape (or master) to another or to a
page.

Once a set of action cells has been copied they can be used to paste
many times to as many shapes or pages as you want.

The cells are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you can use
the standard copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
action cells.

This utility can also be used to delete all the action cells for any
number of shapes on a page.

Copy and Paste Layers

Use this menu to copy and paste layers between pages. The copied layers
are stored internally and can be pasted any number of times to multiple
pages.

Just go to the appropriate page and use the Page → Copy → Layers, then
go to the page where you want to copy to and then use the Page → Paste →
Layers.

Shape utilities

Selected Shape(s) Text Export

This feature reads all the text in each selected shape on the current
page and outputs it to the dialog box.

From here all the text can be read and saved if required.

Grouped Shape Report

This report shows the contents of a grouped shape. It lists all the
shapes that make up the group together with all of the identifiers for
those shapes.

If the Name and NameU for a shape within a group are different then you
will be asked whether you want to rename the shape.

Compare Shapes

Compare two shapes and list the differences. At the moment this feature
cannot work with grouped shapes. Just select the two shapes to be
compared.

The X and Y coordinates of the shape\’s position on the page are not
compared as the chances are that they will always be different.

Shape(s) Substitute

It can be very useful to be able to substitute one or more shapes in a
Visio diagram with a different shape.

These utilities can help you with that.

Select the shape (or type of shape) that you wish to replace. Select
Shape → Shape Substitute from the ribbon.

The Shape(s) to Replace box will show options of which shapes to
replace and the Replacement Scope boxes will allow you to change
where the shape substitution will take place.

Choose the shape that you wish to be the replacement shape from the New
Shape box. This will list all the shapes in all the open stencils.

Remove small shape details

You may have a very detailed drawing that needs to have all the small
details removed. Another area where this is useful is when you\’ve
imported an AutoCAD diagram. These often contain many very small shapes
that are not useful.

With this utility select the shapes you wish to work on, select this
tool from the ribbon menu, you will be asked the size of the items to be
removed (in units of mm, cm, m, inches, feet or yards). The shape must
be smaller than BOTH the selected height and width.

This tool even gets down into grouped shapes to remove small items.

If you are unhappy with the shapes that have been removed then the
operation may be undone via the normal Visio Undo menu.

Copy, Paste and Delete

Copy, Paste and Delete Shapedata

You can even paste multiple times to the same shape but Visio will
allocate a new name to any duplicate row as a shape cannot have two rows
with the same name.

The properties are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you
can use normal copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
Shapedata.

You can also delete the Shapedata from one or more shapes (or masters)
using the SuperUtils → Shape → Delete → Shapedata menu.

Copy, Paste and Delete Connection Points

You can copy connection points from one shape (or master) to another,
pasting back to the original shape duplicates all the connection points
which can be useful if you want, say, to create a large number of
connection points and then edit them.

Once a set of connection points has been copied they can be used to
paste many times to as many shapes as you want.

The connection points are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so
you can use normal copy and paste operations without overwriting any
stored connection points.

This utility can also be used to delete all the connection points for
any number of shapes on a page, even grouped shapes.

Copy, Paste and Delete User-defined Cells

You can copy user-defined cells from one shape (or master) to another or
to a page.

Once a set of user-defined cells has been copied they can be used to
paste many times to as many shapes or pages as you want.

The cells are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you can use
the standard copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
user-defined cells.

This utility can also be used to delete all the user-defined cells for
any number of shapes on a page.

Copy, Paste and Delete Action Cells

You can copy action cells from one shape (or master) to another or to a
page.

Once a set of action cells has been copied they can be used to paste
many times to as many shapes or pages as you want.

The cells are not stored in the regular copy/paste buffer so you can use
the standard copy and paste operations without overwriting any stored
action cells.

This utility can also be used to delete all the action cells for any
number of shapes on a page.

Copy and Paste Text Transform and Character Formatting

If you\’ve ever tried to copy text formats by using the Format Painter
you may have been disappointed because it doesn\’t copy any of the Text
Transform section, even the bits it does copy only copies values, so if
you have a formula set up to control font size all you can copy is the
current value.

You can now get around this by using this Copy and Paste of the Text
Transform and Character Formatting.

Copying the Text Transform and Character Formatting stores the copied
information into an internal memory are so it doesn\’t affect the normal
copy and paste operation.

Select the shape you wish to copy from and use the Copy feature, then
select the shape or shapes you wish to copy to and use the Paste
feature.

The Paste can be used as many times as you like, it only gets cleared
when you close Visio.

Shape Nudge

You might want to move a shape or selection of shapes by a small or a
defined distance, this utility will move the selected shape or shapes by
the user-defined distance and units. No range checking is done so if you
move a shape 100000 yards or meters and it goes way off screen then just
move it back in the opposite direction (or use the Edit → Undo menu).

The dialog box can be moved anywhere on your screen to keep it out of
the way of the shapes that you are moving, also you can use other
features of Visio without having to close the Nudge window.

Units can be selected in (metric) mm, cm, m and (imperial) in, ft and
yd.

To help maintain connectors between shapes select the "Ignore
connectors" box. Nudge will ignore these shapes but they will then move
together with the shapes they are connected to.

A shape nudge action can be undone as one unit by using the Undo menu
(or Control-Z) and the direction of the nudges are identified within the
undo options.

Clear Shape Text Formatting

Use this menu to clear all the text formatting for the selected shapes.
The text font is set to font 0 (Arial) at 8pt and the colour is set to
black. If the text has been set as protected then the formatting will
still be cleared and any protection is retained.

Stencil utilities

Startup Stencils

Sometimes you always want to load a number of stencils, the shapes that
you use every day. From the Manage Startup Stencils menu just add the
stencils that you want to use. You can delete the ones you no longer
require by selecting them and clicking the Delete button. A stencil can
also be temporarily prevented from being opened by turning off its check
mark. You can also prevent any of the stencils being opened by setting
the Active tick box to unticked.

Close All Stencils (without saving)

This option closes all the open stencils for all open documents.

Stencil Report

When developing a stencil or Visio application, the Name and NameU of a
master shape within a stencil can be very important, especially when the
Name and NameU are expected to be identical.

Normally the NameU of a master shape can only be set when the master
shape is created and this same NameU will be kept when a new shape is
developed from an original or the shape is renamed.

For each shape within the currently open stencils this utility firstly
lists the Name and NameU and then checks that the Name and NameU are
identical, if not then the user is asked whether the NameU should be set
to be identical to Name. Then the shape\’s prompt, hidden status, search
keywords, copyright text and icon size all are output followed a check
on whether the shape\’s icon is always updated whenever the master shape
is edited. Finally, some shapes will be listed here but still not be
visible within the stencil. These shapes can be custom line patterns,
line ends and fill patterns.

The output from this utility can be saved to a text file using the "Save
Text" button.

At the end of the report a summary is given of the total number of
shapes with the number of stencils.

The output of this report can be customized to generate only the
information you want, e.g. if you only to list all the shapes within the
stencil the at the initial dialog have only the Name box ticked. This
will give you a listing like:

BASIC_M.vssx

Rectangle
Ellipse
Square
Triangle
Circle
Pentagon
Right Triangle
Heptagon
Hexagon
Decagon
Octagon
Parallelogram
Can
Diamond
Trapezoid
Chevron
Cross
4-Point Star
Cube
6-Point Star
5-Point Star
16-Point Star
7-Point Star
32-Point Star
24-Point Star
Single Snip Corner Rectangle
Rounded Rectangle
Snip Diagonal Corner Rectangle
Snip Same Side Corner Rectangle
Round Same Side Corner Rectangle
Single Round Corner Rectangle
Snip and Round Single Corner Rectangle
Round Diagonal Corner Rectangle
Round Corner Rectangle
Snip Corner Rectangle
Frame
Snip and Round Corner Rectangle
L Shape
Frame Corner
Plaque
Diagonal Stripe
No Symbol
Donut
Left Parenthesis
Center Drag Circle
Left Brace
Right Parenthesis
Right Brace
Stencil report finished.

You can now easily build a complete list of all the shapes within Visio!

Stencil Display

Back in the days of Visio 2000 there was a useful feature for showing a
graphical display of all the shapes in a stencil. For some reason this
has been discontinued. Never mind, I\’ve written an alternative version.
This can display the shapes in one stencil or for all the open stencils.
Use Visio to open the stencil and choose Stencil Display from the menu
SuperUtils → Stencil → Stencil Display, select the stencil you want to
show (or scroll to the end of the list to select "All open stencils"),
on a standard portrait format page 3 by 5 images should be OK, if you
want more or fewer images per page then adjust these numbers. For your
further convenience the page name is set to be the same as the stencil
name, and if more than one page is required for each stencil then 2, 3,
4 etc gets added to any extra pages. Please note that some Visio shapes
cannot be displayed properly:

Backgrounds
Shapes that invoke an add-on
Shapes that calculate their size from another shape
Shapes that extend their geometry outside of their nominal
dimensions.

Update Stencil Master BaseIDs

Warning – this is a very dangerous feature – only use it if you know
what you are doing!

If you create new master shapes you may need to change the shape\’s
BaseID value, every master should have a different value, but this can
only be changed programmatically. It appears to be very poorly
documented.

Ensure only one Visio document is open, open the stencil you wish to
update, then use the utility to change the BaseID values. When you
create a new shape put that shape into it\’s own stencil initially and
update the master\’s BaseID in that stencil, then move the new shape
into its destination stencil. You only need to do this once per master.

Delete Item from Stencil

Some shapes in a stencil can be invisible or cannot be deleted by the
normal method of opening the stencil for edit, selecting the shape and
selecting delete from the menu. If you have a shape like this that you
need to delete from a stencil then:

Make a copy of the stencil first in case it all goes wrong!
Now open a blank document then open the stencil.
Use the menu SuperUtils → Stencil → Stencil Report and get the index
number of the shape that you need to delete.
Now use the Delete Item from Stencil menu to delete this item.

Create Stencil Illustration

As a vendor of a large number of Visio stencils I have a frequent need
to create screen shots of one or more stencils for use on web pages,
help files and instruction manuals. Until now I\’d have to fire up the
appropriate version of Visio, ensure the stencils were easily available
to Visio, start my graphics software, load a stencil, adjust its size,
do a screen dump, load it into the graphics editor, crop the image to
just the stencil area, then save it. Now repeat for 50 stencils!. And
how do you cope with a stencil containing 100 shapes so some are off the
bottom of the screen? What a kerfuffle!

This little utility will fix that, just load up the stencils you want to
create illustrations for, start this utility from the menu, choose which
stencil (or all open stencils), select which version of Visio and the
style of illustration and press OK. The page name will get changed to
reflect the stencil name so when you want to save all the pages as
images the images will have suitable names (see menu Super Utilities →
Page → Export Pages as Images).

You can have your illustrations done in just minutes!

When creating stencils in one of the 3 formats that Visio uses it can be
very important to convert between these 3 formats quickly and easily,
OK, there is a Save As command on the stencil toolbar, but what if you
have 100 stencils to convert?

Put your stencils into a new folder and use this command to select the
stencil input format, then select the folder to convert, then select the
output format. The input and output formats can be in VSS/ VSX or
VSSX/VSSM formats.

Note that the VSSX/VSSM format was not introduced until Visio 2013 so
this option is not available for Visio 2010.

Saving in VSX format is no longer available as of Visio 2013 so this
option is disabled in version 2013 onwards.

Also note that the output format cannot be the same as the input format.

Warning. If files of the same name and type as the output format
already exist then they will be overwritten with no warning.

Hidden Visio Commands

Array Shapes

Creates a table layout of shapes, but hidden away on a totally
inappropriate menu. Why would anyone use the View menu to find something
like this? Only available in Visio Pro.

Auto-Correct Options

OK, these are not quite so useful as some of the others but if you do
need them I\’ll bet you\’d not be able to find them.

Snap and Glue Settings

These are very useful settings, for some reason hidden away so they
can\’t be found.

Center Drawing

Centers the shapes on the page. Useful. Why hide it?

Shape Operations

There are a number of shape operations that are only available on the
Developer ribbon, don\’t know why that was decided, they are useful
things to have available.

So, here are the shape Union, Combine, Fragment, Intersect, Subtract,
Join, Trim and Offset commands.

Here is also the Update Alignment Box command that has also been hidden.

Connect Shapes

Draw a number of shapes on a page, select them all, now use this Connect
Shapes command. How useful is that???? Why hide it?

Visio About

Most software is only too happy to provide an About box so you see the
software version etc.

From Visio 2010 onwards Microsoft have decided not only to make it
difficult to find the Visio About box but to actually not provide a menu
entry for it at all. You have to edit the ribbon or Quick-access system
to be able to get to it!

So, here it is, easy to get at now. Simples.

Most-Recently Used Stencils

Visio keeps a list of your most recently used documents and templates
but not stencils.

Super Utilities can track up to 50 of your most recent stencils (limited
to just 3 in the unregistered version).

Whenever a stencil is opened the name of the stencil is kept in a list
and can be found at the menu Most-recent stencils, just select the
stencil you want and click Load.

Org-Chart Tools

The Org-Chart template within Visio gives you a ribbon with various
options

One thing missing though is the ability to do a headcount on the
diagram, and in a large diagram that could take a long time manually.

This utility allows you to create a headcount for the whole document,
the current page, the current selection, or just the subordinates of the
current selected shape (the headcount here does include the selected
shape).

Not only do you get the total headcount but also each individual
position type e.g. Managers, Executives, Contractors etc.

Org Chart Sort

This feature allows you to re-order (sort) org chart employee cards
(boxes) by a selected property (or multiple properties). It can sort
vertical, horizontal, and side-by-side diagrams.

A screenshot of a computer Description automatically
generated

Supports sorting by property of choice. The property is supposed to
be a Shape Data property.
Can sort by multiple properties (example: first sort by "department, " then by "name"). In the form above, it first will sort by the "Sort By" field and then by "Then By" field.
It can sort immediate children but also can also sort recursively
(the "Recurse" checkbox in the form above).
To sort in descending order (from Z to A, or from 9 to 1) us the
"Sort in descending order" option.
Checking the "Run layout after sort" option will automatically run
Org Chart layout command after the sort is completed. This may help if
you get overlapping items after sort.

Options

The Copy, Paste and Delete features can display a pop-up box to tell you
when the requested action has been performed. Without this pop-up you
may not know that anything has happened, but if you use these features a
lot then the pop-up may get tiresome.

The Most-Recently Used stencils option may be turned on or off and the
maximum number of stencils set from 3 to 50 (it is set to 3 in the
unregistered version).

Application utilities

List all Add-ons

When developing Visio add-ons it can be useful to know not only that
your own add-on has been recognised but also the names of all the other
add-ons recognised by Visio. If there is a clash of add-on names then
one of the add-ons won\’t be working! The output from this utility can
be saved to a text file using the "Save Text" button.

Clear undo data

Does what it says on the tin! Clears all the undo data within Visio.