Microsoft visio shapes guide

Common Tasks : Provides some short procedures for the most common ShapeSheet tasks. Reference : Provides reference materials for the Visio ShapeSheet functions, cells, rows, and sections. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Find shapes on the web If you have an Internet connection, you can search the web for shapes. If you are looking for some very specific or unusual shapes, you might try non-Microsoft providers such as these: Equipment manufacturers If you are looking for shapes that represent specific pieces of equipment, you can often find them at the equipment manufacturer's website.

Save the downloaded stencils After you download a stencil of shapes, copy it to your My Shapes folder. See Also Standard versus Professional editions of Visio.

Search for diagrams in the Visio for the web landing page Open the Visio landing page by using the app launcher. In the Search box at the top of the page, enter a word or phrase. Select a diagram to open it. Search for shapes when editing a diagram You can search for specific shapes that you want to add to the diagram. Open the diagram for editing. In the Search box at the top of the Shapes palette, enter a word or phrase.

To open the shape you want, select it. To return to viewing Shape sets, click an icon in the Shape tabs region. Search for shapes when viewing a diagram You can search for specific shapes that are in the diagram.

Open the diagram for viewing. Enter a word or phrase. Results appear in the Find pane. To locate the shape you want, select it. See Also Visio for the web help View, create, and edit a diagram in Visio for the web.

Need more help? Expand your skills. Get new features first. Was this information helpful? Yes No. Thank you! Any more feedback? The more you tell us the more we can help. Can you help us improve? Resolved my issue. Clear instructions. Easy to follow. No jargon. Pictures helped. Didn't match my screen. Incorrect instructions. Too technical. Individual manager shapes can be collapsed and shown as needed. Collapsing shapes is useful to reduce the clutter in the diagram. To collapse the hierarchy under a shape, right-click a shape, go to the Subordinates menu and click Hide Subordinates.

The subordinate shapes then collapse under the manager shape. This is indicated by a tree icon under the manager shape. If the shapes are synchronized, any changes made to them elsewhere will be automatically reflected in the main shape. To reveal the subordinates again, right-click the manager shape, go to the Subordinates menu and click Show Subordinates. Although you can manually create the org chart using different shapes in the Shapes pane, Visio also provides an automated way of importing information about your organization from an external source.

In this chapter, we will look into importing data from information in an Excel spreadsheet. Create an Excel spreadsheet or use an existing one containing some of the important information in the header row that goes into creating an org chart.

Important information includes Employee, Title, Manager and Department. The Employee and Manager fields are mandatory and the others are optional. There are two ways of starting the Organization Chart wizard. The first method involves using the Organization Chart Wizard from the Templates section in the New menu. The other method is to use the Import command in the Organization Data section from the Org Chart tab in the Ribbon, if you have already created an org chart. The second method is recommended if you need the background formatting to carry over onto all the pages in the org chart.

The first method creates all the pages required, but you need to individually format each page, which can get tedious if your organization is large. Either ways, the Organization Chart Wizard appears in which you can specify the features of your org chart. The first screen of the Organization Chart Wizard gives the option of either selecting the existing information from a file or manually entering information. For this example, we will choose the first option. Click Next to proceed to the next screen in the wizard.

In the following screen, you can choose the source in which the organizational information is stored. Select the second option and click Next. In this screen, in the Name field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that contains the name of the employee. In the Reports to field dropdown, select the field in the Excel spreadsheet that denotes the reporting manager.

If the name and first names are in different fields, specify the field containing the first name of the employee in the First name dropdown. Visio will combine the name and first name fields to generate the full name of the employee. Click Next to continue. The Data File Columns box lists all the data fields that are present in the header of the Excel file. You can select the fields that you need to be displayed in the Displayed Fields section by selecting the required fields and then click Add.

Click Next, once the desired fields are added. In the next screen, you can choose the fields the shape data should be based on. The shape data fields will be similar to the fields selected in the previous step so in most cases, you can leave it as such.

You can also add any additional fields if needed. In the following screen, you can choose to include pictures of the employees. If you have labelled pictures in the same format as the employee names, you can point to the location of the folder containing pictures of all the employees. Or you can simply choose not to include any pictures.

In this screen, you can choose how much of organization info can be displayed on one page, if there are many employees spanning many pages. You can also choose to allow Visio to automatically break the org chart across pages. Make sure that Hyperlink employee shapes across pages and Synchronize employee shapes across pages are selected. Click Finish to finally create the org chart.

After clicking Finish, Visio will start processing information from the Excel spreadsheet and create the org chart based on the parameters specified in the wizard. You will see a progress indicator showing the status of the creation. The completed org chart can be saved as a PDF or any of the image formats by going to the File menu and clicking Save As. Select from any of the file types in the Save As type field.

If you save the drawing as a JPG or GIF file, you will get another dialog box, which allows to further specify the output options. A brainstorming diagram is similar to an org chart but is used more to convey different ideas about a topic.

To create a brainstorming diagram, click File and go to the New menu. In the Templates section, select Business, and then in the list of templates, select Brainstorming Diagram, choose the desired units to work with and click Create. You will notice that the brainstorming diagram document is created and ready to use.

This has a few notable differences compared to the org chart. Firstly, the number of shapes are lesser than an org chart. Secondly, there is an Outline Window that appears in the drawing showing the outline of the diagram. Thirdly, there is a Brainstorming tab added to the ribbon, which contains tools required to use the brainstorming diagram. To create the central topic for the brainstorming diagram, drag the Main topic shape onto the canvas.

Unlike the org chart where you had to double-click the shape to enter text, you can start typing text in a brainstorming diagram as soon as you drag the shape onto the canvas.

In this chapter, we will learn how to add, edit and place subtopics in the brainstorming diagram using Visio. In a brainstorming diagram, sub-shapes are not directly inserted on top of the main shape. A sub-shape is inserted as a subtopic. To insert a subtopic, first click the Main topic shape and then click the Brainstorming tab on the Ribbon. In the Add Topics section, click Subtopic.

You can also create multiple subtopics at once by clicking the Multiple Subtopics in the Add Topics section. This opens the Add Multiple Topics dialog box, where you can enter the names of each of the subtopics. Subtopics can be edited simply by clicking the title of the subtopic and typing over it. You can also edit a subtopic by clicking its name twice in the Outline Window. The Outline Window represents the topic hierarchy of the brainstorm.

The subtopics can be dragged by their connectors and placed anywhere on the canvas. They will always be linked to the Main topic shape. The Outline Window makes it easy to edit the order of topics or topic names in the diagram. Any changes made in the Outline Window will be readily reflected in the actual diagram. The Outline Window can be pinned or unpinned by clicking on the push pin icon to the bottom left of the window.

This enables the window to auto-hide when not in use. Topics can be edited by clicking twice on the topic name within the window and typing. The order of the topics can also be changed by clicking and dragging the topic from one subtopic into another. You can also right-click a topic and Move Up or Move Down to change the order of the topics. To delete a topic, right-click a topic and then click Delete Topic or simply select a topic and press the Delete key on the keyboard.

You can customize the brainstorming diagram in a similar manner to other types of diagrams by changing the shape, style, and layout. The shapes of individual topics can be customized into a variety of built-in shapes.

Hold down the Shift key, select the topics one by none and in the Brainstorming tab, click Change Topic in the Arrange section. This opens the Change Shape dialog box, which lists the shape types you can change to. Select a shape type and click OK. The brainstorming diagram can be customized by choosing different themes and theme variants. To choose a theme, go to the Design tab on the Ribbon and select a theme. You can also choose different variants for the theme by selecting a variant in the Variants section.

The Variant section has a dropdown using which you can further customize the colors and effects such as drop shadows. You can also customize the style of the diagram so that it looks more elegant and professional. You can choose from a variety of brainstorming styles and also a couple of mosaic options, which includes a mix of all the styles.

Select a style and click Apply to see the result. Click OK to close the dialog box. You can also customize the layout by clicking Layout in the Brainstorming tab. Select a layout from the Select a layout section.

You can also choose the type of connector in the Connectors section. Select a layout and click Apply to see the result. You can send brainstorming data directly to Word and Excel and in fact, to any program that accepts XML input. Any changes can be saved to this XML file, which can then be imported back into Visio. Note that these options are available, only if you have the versions of Word and Excel installed on your computer. In Excel, the data is organized into topic levels.

For example, T1 represents the main topic, T1. You can add or remove topic hierarchies here and save the XML file, which can then be reimported back into Visio. Similar to org charts and brainstorming diagrams, you can also create timelines in Visio to depict a schedule or a series of events.

To create a timeline, go to the New menu in the File tab and click Templates. Go to the Schedule category, click Timeline and then Create to create the timeline workspace. Since the timeline essentially measures time, units selection is inconsequential. Once the Timeline template is created, click and drag the Block timeline shape from the Shapes pane onto the canvas.

This opens a Configure Timeline dialog box, where you can select the duration for the timeline and the Timescale. Click Ok. Milestones represent specific points in time during which an important event has occurred or is scheduled to occur. To add a milestone, click and drag the Line Milestone shape onto a chosen interval on the timeline.

It need not be dropped exactly on a specific interval, since you can manually configure the exact date and time of the event. When you drag the milestone onto the timeline, the Configure Milestone dialog box appears, where you can specify the exact date and time of the milestone along with a description of the event. You can also choose from the standard date formats to better represent the time and date.

Click OK to create the milestone on the timeline. The milestone can be dragged along the timeline, and the date and time of the milestone will be updated accordingly. When adding many milestones, it is possible that the description text of the milestones will run into each other creating a messy look.

It is possible to avoid collisions by changing the position of the milestone text. If you happen to have a colliding text, simply grab the yellow end of the milestone and drag to a separate position, such as the bottom or higher up. You can also angle the yellow end by simply turning your mouse to a desired angle.

Once the yellow end is dragged and released, the Line milestone shape adjusts itself accordingly. You can also use the guides to glue the yellow ends of multiple milestones so that they are all aligned. An interval denotes a block of time over the course of which an event occurs or is scheduled. To add an interval, drag the Block interval shape onto a location on the timeline. It opens the Configure Interval dialog box. In the Configure Interval dialog box, you can select the duration of the interval, the date format and add a description.

Click OK to add the interval to the timeline. Intervals can overlap milestones or other events. By formatting the interval shape to make it transparent, any other shape behind it can be made visible. Markers and indicators can be used to denote specific events such as current date or elapsed time. Markers help to gain a perspective of where you currently stand with respect to your objectives in the current timeline.

You might want to adjust the yellow end to ensure that the marker text does not overlap with your milestone or other information. Another marker or indicator that can be useful is, Elapsed time. The Elapsed time indicator helps in gauging the time elapsed since the beginning of the timeline. It is indicated by a green rectangle along the duration of the elapsed time.

Of course, just like any other shape, the color of the Elapsed time shape can be customized. Expanded timelines are useful to get a zoomed in view of the finer aspects of a time period. For example, the expanded timeline can show many details of events in a particular period, which might not be visible on the main timeline. To create an expanded timeline, drag the Expanded timeline shape onto the main timeline.

This opens the familiar Configure timeline dialog box in which you can specify the start and finish dates. Since this is an expanded timeline, you can choose a lower scale such as weeks instead of months if you have a packed agenda for the week.

The expanded timeline is connected to the main timeline by means of two dotted connectors with yellow ends. The yellow ends can be used to move or change the orientation of the expanded timeline.

You can also add milestone events to the expanded timeline. However, any event or interval added to the expanded timeline will not show up in the main timeline. You can apply the usual formatting techniques, such as themes and variants to a timeline.

You can also select a background so that all successive timelines are created using the background template. You can also change the timeline and other shapes to make it look like a block, cylinder, or a bracket by right-clicking the shape and selecting the corresponding type from the menu.

Visio also allows you to let others edit the drawing, if provided access. This happens via Microsoft OneDrive and you need to be signed in to Visio to access this feature. To share a drawing for editing or review, go to the File menu and click Share. The document has to be first saved to the cloud, so click Save to Cloud to save the document to your personal or official OneDrive folder.

Once the document is saved to your OneDrive folder, you can invite others by sending them the link to the shared drawing. You can define whether people just get to view it or get to edit it as well. Your collaborators can then open the shared drawing in the cloud and open the drawing directly in their Visio installation. They can open and review the drawing online in their browsers; however, any changes to the drawing itself requires the users to have a local copy of Visio installed.

You can create calendars in Visio to help you better organize and deliver information. To create a calendar, go to the New menu in the File tab and click Templates, then Schedule. In the Schedule category, click Multi week Task Calendar and then Create to create the calendar workspace.

Depending on your version of Visio, you might just notice the template as Calendar. You will see that there is a default calendar created.

You can however, create your own calendar by dragging the Month shape onto an empty canvas. This opens the Configure dialog box, where you can specify the calendar month. Days of the month are automatically filled and the weekends are differentiated from the weekdays. To add a single day appointment, click the Appointment shape in the Shapes pane and drag it on to a location in the calendar.

This opens the Configure dialog box, where you can enter the details of the appointment. Click OK to add the appointment on the prescribed date. Sometimes, appointments can stretch over multiple days. To add a multi-day appointment, click and drag the Multi-day event shape from the Shapes pane onto the calendar. This again opens a Configure dialog box, where you can specify details of the event along with the start and end dates. Once the multi-day appointment is created, you can drag the appointment handle to cover additional dates, if needed.

Calendars can be customized just like any other Visio drawing by applying themes and variants. Calendars can also be customized to show weather conditions or even moon phases.

To add a shape such as weather icons, scroll down the list of shapes in the Shapes pane and drag the desired icon onto a date in the calendar.

You can align multiple shapes using the dynamic grids that appear when you try to align shapes next to each other. You can also change the look and feel of the calendar by selecting themes and variants from the Design tab in the Ribbon. Adding additional months is simple in Visio. You can rename the page by double-clicking on the page title. Once you add a new page, create a new calendar by clicking and dragging the Month shape onto the new page. Configure the calendar for the new month.

To add additional months, simply create new pages by duplicating the current page. To duplicate a page, right-click the name of the page and click Duplicate. This creates duplicate of the current calendar page. Now, simply reconfigure the calendar on the new page by going to the Calendar menu on the Ribbon and clicking Configure. When you change the month, you get a warning message that all scheduling information will be lost.

Click OK to reconfigure the calendar on the new page. You can import existing calendars from Outlook directly into Visio. Follow the steps in the wizard to import the calendar into Visio. You can import into an existing Visio calendar or create a new calendar with the Outlook data. If you are importing into an existing Visio calendar, make sure to select the correct date range for importing, otherwise the data will not be shown in the Visio calendar.

Floor plans help to visualize the layout of a room or a floor in a building. Floor plans help architects to understand the placement of objects on the floor, and the design of doors and windows as well as other rooms. Select a shape that has text. Click Home and use tools in the Font and Paragraph groups to format the text. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, move the pointer slowly over the different themes.

Each theme adds different colors and effects to the diagram. Click the one you want to apply. Click one of the background designs. Now look down at the bottom of Visio, just under the drawing page. There are two tabs: Page-1 and VBackground Page-1 is the page with the shapes on it, and VBackground-1 is a background page you just added. Click VBackground-1 to see just the background page, and then click Page-1 to go back to the diagram. Click one of the options to add it to the diagram.

Notice the border and title are added to the background page, so if you want to add the title, click the tab for the background page. Now click Title once and start typing. The title changes to your new text. Visio allows you to apply built-in templates, to apply your own custom templates, and to search from a variety of templates available on Office.

To use one of the built-in templates, under Template Categories , click the category that you want, and then click the template that you want and click Create. To use your own template that you previously created, under Other Ways to Get Started , click New from existing , navigate to the file that you want and click Create New.

To find a template on Office. Note: You can also search for templates on Office. To search for templates on Office. In the Search Office. Note: You are in the Backstage view when you first open Visio. If you have just opened Visio, proceed to the next step. When the diagram template opens, most of the space is taken up with a blank diagramming page. Along the side is the Shapes window, which contains several stencils full of shapes. The stencils are identified by title bars at the top of the Shapes window; you might need to scroll the title bar pane to see them all.

When you click a stencil title bar, the shapes appear in the pane below. In the left pane of the Open dialog box, click the drive or folder that contains the drawing. In the right pane of the Open dialog box, open the folder that contains the drawing that you want.

You can save your diagram as a standard Visio file that you can share with other people who have Visio. In addition, there are many different formats that you can save your diagram in directly from the Save As dialog box. Click Save As , and then select a format in the Save as type list.

Web page in HTM format. Image files and other resource files are saved in a subfolder of the location where you save the HTM file. For more information about how to add shapes, see Use the Shapes window to organize and find shapes and Find more shapes and stencils. To add a shape to the drawing page so that it is automatically connected when it is added to the page, do the following:.

Hold your pointer over the shape that is already on the page. Notice that small blue arrows appear on the four sides of the shape. These are AutoConnect arrows that you can use to connect shapes. A mini toolbar that contains four shapes appears, and a preview shape might also appear on the page.

As you move the pointer over the shapes in the mini toolbar, previews of the shapes appear. The shapes on the toolbar are the top four shapes from the Quick Shapes area. To automatically connect two shapes when you drag the second shape onto the page, do the following:. Drag a second shape onto the drawing page and hold it so it covers the first shape, but do not drop it yet.

Notice that the AutoConnect arrows appear. Move the second shape down over the AutoConnect arrow that points in the direction that you want, and drop it on the arrow. The Analyze shape is spaced a standard distance from the Service Request shape, and is connected automatically. When the AutoConnect arrows appear, move the pointer over an arrow that is pointing toward the other shape that you want to connect to.

Click and hold the AutoConnect arrow, and then drag a connector from it to the center of the other shape. When the arrow is over the center of the other shape, a red border appears around the shape. Drop the connector to attach it, or "glue" it, to the shape.

For more information about how to connect shapes, see Add connectors between shapes in Visio. When you start typing, Visio switches the selected shape to text editing mode.

Select the shape again.