Which shape? Some Visio shapes are built with special functionality that
intentionally preserves some aspects of the formatting.
A classic problem occurs when you have a shape that is a group of
sub-shapes. If you apply a fill color to the group, ALL of the subshapes
will take that color. Imagine a network computer shape. That would look
really crummy, because the screen, housing, pc -- all of it would turn red.
So shape designers might have tried to make it work a bit better.
In other situations, a shape might need to work with a specific add-on
functionality like UML diagramming or Org charts or something. It's possible
that the add-on functionality needs a shape to behave in a specific way to
keep the diagram accurate.
If you just need graphics, you can always copy a shape, then Paste > Special
as metafile. Now, Ungroup the shape, and you'll have the "dummified"
geometry, with no protection settings set. You'll also lose any nice text
behovior or custom property data fields that were on the original shape.
--
Hope this helps,
Chris Roth
Visio MVP
"Needablackandwhiterouter"
