CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visio
Barleyman
Barleyman

Reputation: 165

Visio Drawing Explorer reverse selection?

There's a drawing explorer tool (hidden in developer settings) that allows you to pick any object in the drawing from a selection tree, fair enough. However, how to show what the object is when you click on it on the drawing? I was really surprised that clicking on a drawing object does not highlight in the drawing explorer as well, but it doesn't..

My use case for this is locking a background shape box from selection so I can lasso objects without dragging the background shape around, for that you need to do it on the drawing explorer, not just in "protect" dialog.

If there simply isn't backwards synchronization option between drawing and the drawing explorer, I'd have to know the object name. You'd expect the object name to be shown somewhere as soon as you click on it but it doesn't..

I can right click on the object and pick shapesheet, which shows the name along with a pile of useless (to me) information on the object. You can leave that open but it won't update when you click on another object. Hidden on the developer tab there's a "shape name" option which pops up a modal dialog you can't leave open so it'd show the name of whatever you click on.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 181

Answers (2)

Nikolay
Nikolay

Reputation: 12245

There is an extension to do just that (jusmp back to shape in drawing explorer). The installer: https://unmanagedvisio.com/products/jump-to-shape/

It is free and open source. I have not updated it for quite a while, but it still works. The source (if you are interested): https://github.com/nbelyh/JumpToShapeAddin

Upvotes: 1

Barleyman
Barleyman

Reputation: 165

I found a rather convoluted way of doing this.

First, to show live name of whatever you have clicked on, you need to have the "Diagram navigation" pane open, which shows up from View tab in "show" on task panes icon.

THAT pane highlights whatever you click on and you can rename it. but it doesn't show hierarchy like the drawing explorer but at least you can give a descriptive name by double clicking on a a name on the navigation pane. That name will update on the Drawing explorer (but won't be selected) so you can at find it easily in the tree.

However, you cannot protect a shape by either drawing explorer or diagram navigation panes, so while I now know how to get from drawing object to drawing explorer, it doesn't solve my dilemma, that's an another question.

You have to go to developer tab and pick "protection" icon from "Shape design" section. This does not prevent you from selecting the shape yet.

After this you have to go to the drawing explorer, right click on the top-level document name and pick "protect document", hey presto, now that background shape is not selectable so it won't interfere working on objects on top of it.

Upvotes: 0

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