Visio 2003 Tools -> Reports

[Andy]

I am using the Visio 2003 reports for generating a bill of materials. I save
the reports directly on the Visio drawing as a shape.

I have to resize the "shape" every time I run the report. I have tried to
lock down the shapes size and position using the regular Format -> Protection
options, but that doesn't seem to work that well.

Is there any way to lock down the XY position and size of the shape?

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

You might be able to place GUARD expressions around the Width and Height,
but in this case the Report feature may ignore all that.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Andy]

I'm am not sure what you mean by "guard expressions". Can you explain
further? Also, it sounds kike you doubt this will work - so are there any
more ideas out there?

 

[Mark Nelson [MS]]

I mean open the Shapesheet window for the report shape and modify the Width
and Height formulas so that they include the GUARD function.

Width = GUARD(widthformula)
Height = GUARD(heightformula)

where widthformula and heightformula are the values you really want.

--
Mark Nelson
Office Graphics - Visio
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Andy]

That didn't work. All it does is lock the width and height against
modifications after the report is rerun. It seems the report generation
process has something in it that causes this behavior, but I can't find it.

 

[Michel LAPLANE]

The report addon create an oleobject and it calculate the width of the shape
and surcharge all you have put in th width cell. The only thing you can do
is doubleclick the report object to get the excel menu and modify the format
of the column (color, size of the font,...) but for the width of the column,
the addon resize the excel column regarding the width of the title an
recalculate it each time so you cannot force it.