ShapeSheet

The ShapeSheet of a Visio shape is truly a powerful tool. The ampersand is the magical force in actions The simple trick to perform several actions in 1 go is by adding an & to it. If you want to set the color of a shape and change the line weight at the same time you can combine this in the action.

Checkboxes

With the Visio Actions you can create useful behaviour for your custom shapes. To make the context menu more appealing you can add some small options inside the ShapeSheet. An easy improvement is a feedback if a menu item is active or not. In the shape we created in the previous post, we can add the following in the Checked-field of the Action.Blue action we made:

Context menus for Visio shapes

Some Visio shapes have one or more custom options in the context menu that you can find with a right mouse click. But how are these menus made? The short answer is that the Visio ShapeSheet for the shape makes this possible.

Let's assume you already have the developer option in Visio switched on. Through a right-click on the shape (for example a rectangle), you choose Show ShapeSheet. Inside the new ShapeSheet window, you can add the sections by right-clicking anywhere on the ShapeSheet and selecting Insert Section...