External data from Excel truncated, sometimes

[Margaret]

I make a lot of cross-functional flowcharts that are linked to Excel data
(text). Sometimes the text is quite long.

When I link to external data, /sometimes/ the text truncates. Seems to cut
off at 255 characters. But other times, it doesn't truncate, and I
successfully link to far more than 255 characters.

Vision 2007, Excel 2007 (but also occurred with Excel 2003). Has anyone else
seen this? Do you know a fix?

Workaround is to link, then edit the shape data in Visio to add the missing
text, but that is not ideal.

 

[Margaret]

For the benefit of anyone else who sees this post, I finally answered my own
question.

Visio previews data when it imports. It seems to be looking at the first 8
rows of data (I'm also importing a header row, so it could be 9 if you have
no headers). If it sees strings that exceed 255 characters on preview, then
it allows longer strings to be imported in that column. If it doesn't see a
string that exceeds 255 on the rows it previews, it truncates all strings in
that column to 255 characters.

Solution is to re-sort the spreadsheet by =LEN(A1) (where A1 is the cell
with the text data) in descending order to get the longer strings into the
preview rows.

 

[AlEdlund]

Margaret,
Thanks for the tip,
al

For the benefit of anyone else who sees this post, I finally answered my
own
question.

Visio previews data when it imports. It seems to be looking at the first 8
rows of data (I'm also importing a header row, so it could be 9 if you
have
no headers). If it sees strings that exceed 255 characters on preview,
then
it allows longer strings to be imported in that column. If it doesn't see
a
string that exceeds 255 on the rows it previews, it truncates all strings
in
that column to 255 characters.

Solution is to re-sort the spreadsheet by =LEN(A1) (where A1 is the cell
with the text data) in descending order to get the longer strings into the
preview rows.