Visio 2007 Pro -Missing ability to format existing text as vertical text

[Robert Guadagnoli]

I have been using Visio since it's release and I have always had the
function to change text so it appears vertical. You can do this in all MS
office products. I have a new installation of Visio 2007 Pro and I didn't
see the button on the tool bar. So I opened up help and got this:

Select the shape.
Click the Change Text Direction button .
The shape's text rotates 90° clockwise and appears in a vertical font.
Note To display the Change Text Direction tool, on the Tools menu, click
Options, click the Regional tab, and, in the Asian text list, click Show.

I looked at the note and thought OK, I will change this setting. But when I
open tools and options, there is no Regional tab to select the Asian text
list. and click show. No tab exists.

I installed the same software on another machine and it has the same issue.
I can go to the tool bar and customize it and drag the Change Text Direction
button to the tool bar, but as soon as I click OK, it disappears.

I have searched the web and people are having the same issue, but then they
are told to go to tools --> options --> regional setting and in the Asian
text list, click Show. This fixes their issue, but for me, I don't have that
tab.

I thought I figured it out, at least on my Windows XP box. I went to go into
control panel and regional and language options. From there the languages
tab. Then I selected the checkbox to install files for east Asian Languages.
I never recall having to do that with other versions of Vision before to use
that function, or to use that function in Word or Excel... after adding the
east Asian language and rebooting, it still does not display a regional tab
in the options for Visio. So this is still an open issue. I thought for sure
that would have corrected it.

 

[Paul Herber]

I have been using Visio since it's release and I have always had the
function to change text so it appears vertical.

Select the shape, menu Window -> Show ShapeSheet
go to the Text Transform section, if it's not there then right click
on the background and either insert it or make it visible.
In the TxtWidth cell put a small value in there, the ideal value might
depend upon the text font size, but 2mm seems to work very well, keeps
the text nicely centered as well.

 

[Robert Guadagnoli]

Thanks for the input. It still doesn't help me with the function that is
supposed to be there. The Change Text Direction button will not appear.

I did however figure out I can right click the shape and choose Shape then
at the bottom there is a rotate text option. This ultimately does what I
want to do, just never had to do it this way before.

 

[Robert Guadagnoli]

They key seems to be to add Japanese in the MS Office settings, not in the
Windows settings:
Click Start, click All Programs, click Microsoft Office, click Microsoft
Office Tools, and then click Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings and
add Japanese there.

The Change Text Direction button now will appear on the toolbar.

Thanks for the input. It still doesn't help me with the function that is
supposed to be there. The Change Text Direction button will not appear.

I did however figure out I can right click the shape and choose Shape then
at the bottom there is a rotate text option. This ultimately does what I
want to do, just never had to do it this way before.

 

[Paul Herber]

Thanks for the input. It still doesn't help me with the function that is
supposed to be there. The Change Text Direction button will not appear.

Do you mean the Text Rotation tool?
If you can see the Text Tool (an icon showing an A), next to it is a
small black triangle, click that and you'll see the option of the Text
Block tool.