How to customize shortcut menu?

[SusanB]

I searched Visio's help for how to add commands from the Shape menu to the
Shortcut (AKA right-click menu) menu and it took me to a Microsoft training
document on "Customize Your Toolbars and Menus" that said it applied to
Visio 2003 as well as other MS products. This document showed how one could
customize shortcut menus. However, my Visio does not have a Shortcut menu as
the document indicates. All I want to do is be able to select several
shapes, right-click and have one of the options be "Align Shapes". Surely I
can add that to the right-click menu, can't I?
Susan

 

[John Goldsmith]

Hello Susan,

Visio does have programatic methods for adding to and changing the UI
(lookup CommandBars and UIObject in developer help) but perhaps you can
achieve what you're after by using the Actions section of the ShapeSheet and
using the DOCMD function?

Have a look at these two links:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa200979(office.10).aspx (Using
Actions)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa342178.aspx (DOCMD())

For example DOCMD(1049) will bring up the alignment dialog.

For a quick intro to the ShapeSheet if you're not familiar, have a look at
this blog post:

http://visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/vislog/2007/10/just-for-starte.html

Hope that helps.

Best regards

John


John Goldsmith
www.visualSignals.typepad.co.uk
www.visualSignals.co.uk

 

[SusanB]

John,
Thanks so much for your reply. I am a bit dismayed that there isn't a
simpler solution. I will keep your reply for when I have more time. I just
"use" Visio, but haven't done any programming in it.
Thanks again.
Susan

 

[John Goldsmith]

That's fine. The Actions may be the way to go for you then (this just
involves the ShapeSheet, which is more Excel than programming).

Note that you can add right-click actions to a Master shape and then it will
appear in all of the instance shapes in the drawing.

Anyway, I completely understand about the just 'using' Visio, but I would
certainly encourage you to check out the ShapeSheet. Visio gets a whole lot
more powerful in there.

Best regards

John


John Goldsmith
www.visualSignals.typepad.co.uk
www.visualSignals.co.uk

 

[RogerC]

I read all three of the articles. It seems that the 'Using Actions' method
only lets you apply a chosen action from the right-click menu to a specific
shape. I would like to make the action always available from the shortcut
menu regardless of what I'm clicking on.

In the developer method I believe the most 'globally' available method is to
apply the code to an individual document (Application.ActiveDocument). I
would like to have the action available whenever I use Visio.

I use the Pan & Zoom window a great deal so I'd like to be able to quickly
open and close it from the right-click menu. Is there a relatively simple
(I'm not a developer but I have done some VB stuff in Excel. Some of it even
worked.) programming method to add this option to the shortcut menu?

Visio2007, WinXP

 

[RogerC]

I think I may have misunderstood 'Application.ActiveDocument'. I now believe
it does make the code available whenever I use Visio. Has anyone seen a
tutorial on how to do this? (I will move this to the Developer board now).