Editing Visio Organizational Chart Masters

[mforb87]

Visio 2003 Professional SP3

I have a question for any Visio experts out there. I am trying to create a
basic organization chart in Visio. However, I want to edit the Visio
Organizational Chart stencil master shapes to show some specific information
associated with sales efforts. Since the default Visio Organizational Chart
stencil masters are NOT editable, I copied them to a personal stencil, which
allows the masters to be edited. There seems to be no problem in editing the
master (simply adding a few basic shapes at the bottom of each type of shape
for sales classification). However, after saving the edited master, when you
try to actually drag the new master into the drawing, it simply reverts back
to the original master shape. While dragging the edited master into the
drawing, the newly edited image is shown. However, when you actually release
the drag, the shape reverts back to the original master shape. I even tried
the Shape > Group option while editing the master.

I am hoping that someone out there can help me

Thanks for any help!

mforb87

 

[Paul Herber]

Visio 2003 Professional SP3

I have a question for any Visio experts out there. I am trying to create a
basic organization chart in Visio. However, I want to edit the Visio
Organizational Chart stencil master shapes to show some specific information
associated with sales efforts. Since the default Visio Organizational Chart
stencil masters are NOT editable, I copied them to a personal stencil, which
allows the masters to be edited. There seems to be no problem in editing the
master (simply adding a few basic shapes at the bottom of each type of shape
for sales classification). However, after saving the edited master, when you
try to actually drag the new master into the drawing, it simply reverts back
to the original master shape. While dragging the edited master into the
drawing, the newly edited image is shown. However, when you actually release
the drag, the shape reverts back to the original master shape. I even tried
the Shape > Group option while editing the master.

I am hoping that someone out there can help me

Thanks for any help!

With Visio closed, go to the folder where you found the stencil
masters, rename that stencil as, say, old_ORGCH_U.vss and copy in your
modified version.
The Org chart addon does modify some properties of a shape as it's
dropped on the diagram, in particular, the shape's text. But I've just
tried modifying the master shape's fill colour - that worked.

 

[mforb87]

Thanks for the help Paul! This did get me part of the way, and I did
experience the fact that the shape fill can be edited. However, after adding
that shape to the drawing, I notice that trying to add subordinates does not
work at all. It seems like any edit made to the original master breaks its
ability to accept subordinates.

Any further thoughts from anyone? Thanks again Paul!

mforb87

 

[Paul Herber]

Thanks for the help Paul! This did get me part of the way, and I did
experience the fact that the shape fill can be edited. However, after adding
that shape to the drawing, I notice that trying to add subordinates does not
work at all. It seems like any edit made to the original master breaks its
ability to accept subordinates.

Odd, that still works for me, I modified the Executive shape to have a
red fill and changed the master's text, and modified the master icon
as well so I can see that the correct stencil is loaded, having
replaced the stencil in the Visio folder, the new stencil is used, the
red filled shape is dragged with its updated text but when the shape
is dropped the text gets modified back to the default Name and Title.
The red fill stays though and a Manager shape can be dropped on the
Executive successfully.