Exporting from Visio to Excel and then back to Visio

[Stefano Vallini]

Hi everybody, here is what I would like to do:
1-Create a Visio 2003 document (be it a flow chart, a brainstorming
template or else)
2-Export that document to a MsExcel file
3-Edit the text strings (e.g. the content of flowchart shapes) in the
MsExcel file
4-Export the MsExcel file back to Visio, thus acknowledging in the
Visio document the changes made via MsExcel

Can someone list the steps I have to follow to complete this job?
In case this issue had already been discussed, could you redirect me
to that thread?

Thanks a lot

Stefano

 

[Steve Jones]

Get ready for some work. You'll need to know how to create your shapes using
a master. Once you do that you can export your data to Excel or some other
program using the ODBC. You need to get a book about exporting drawings to
databases. We do that here in our company but Visio doesn't always refresh
the data properly. Sometimes the links betweent he Visio data and the Excel
data disapper.
The book I used to help me link Excel and Visio is "Learn Visio 2000 for the
Advanced User" by Ralph Grabowski. There may be better books out there. This
book leaves out a lot of the whys of what you are doing. It also doesn't do a
good job of explaining about the different fields of the .dsn file and if you
really need all the fields in the .dsn. We have found that you can add
comments to the .dsn file.

I'm still looking for a better expanation of just what the functions are for
the different fields in the .dsn file.