Using the palette from the toolbar

[john.penton]

Can anybody tell me if and how I can use the numbered palette colours
from the toolbar? I have a palette defined, but I normally set the
colours using the drop down menus from the Formatting toolbar (which
gives an RGB colour). I would like to have a drop down menu on a
toolbar that contains just the palette colours.

Using Visio Pro 2003.

Thanks,

John

 

[Brett Newman]

The only way I know of to do what you ask in Visio 2003 or earlier is via
custom code to create the palette toolbar. Not for casual users.

This won't help you now, but Visio 2007 will have an enhanced color fill
tool that shows a color theme palette, recent colors, and standard colors in
a format like what you describe.

Here's a Visio 2003 work around... not an elegant UI, but maybe it will work
for you. Create a matrix of squares and fill them with the palette colors
you want. Group them together. With the group selected, click the menu
Format - Behavior and under Group Behavior in the Selection field, select
Members First. Save the group on a new or existing stencil of your choice (I
hope you know how to do this) so that you have a new master. Now, drop the
master onto your drawing. Click on a color swatch and then select the format
painter in the Visio toolbar (the little brush) or use the shortcut
Ctrl-Shift-P. Finally, click the shape you want to fill with that color.

This will work fine if you don't care much about the other format attributes
such as line weight, line color, text style, etc. because the format painter
will pick up all of those and transfer them to the new shape.

 

[john.penton]

The only way I know of to do what you ask in Visio 2003 or earlier is via
custom code to create the palette toolbar. Not for casual users.

This won't help you now, but Visio 2007 will have an enhanced color fill
tool that shows a color theme palette, recent colors, and standard colors in
a format like what you describe.

Here's a Visio 2003 work around... not an elegant UI, but maybe it will work
for you. Create a matrix of squares and fill them with the palette colors
you want. Group them together. With the group selected, click the menu
Format - Behavior and under Group Behavior in the Selection field, select
Members First. Save the group on a new or existing stencil of your choice (I
hope you know how to do this) so that you have a new master. Now, drop the
master onto your drawing. Click on a color swatch and then select the format
painter in the Visio toolbar (the little brush) or use the shortcut
Ctrl-Shift-P. Finally, click the shape you want to fill with that color.

This will work fine if you don't care much about the other format attributes
such as line weight, line color, text style, etc. because the format painter
will pick up all of those and transfer them to the new shape.

Yup, that will probably help in many situations.

Many thanks,

John