Visio 2007 Pro - Data linking reversed

[Julian Paolucci]

If I select all the shapes in a Visio 2007 Pro drawing, then select all rows
of External Data and drag them to the selected shapes, the data is linked to
the shapes from right to left.

Why does this happen - or, more to the point, is there a way to avoid this
other than by individually selecting the shapes in order from left to right?

 

[Aaron Rykhus [MSFT]]

When you drop multiple rows onto multiple shapes Visio will map the order
of the shape's ID with the order of whatever the Arrange By column is in
the External Data window. If you can't find a way to match those up, then
you'll need to have a Shape Data field match an External Data field and use
the Automatically Link... right-click command in the External Data window.
Those are the only ways I can think of short of dropping one at a time.

To view the shape's ID you need to have 'Run in developer mode' checked
under Tools/Options/Advanced, then right-click on the shape, point to
Format, and click on Special... If you're familiar with the Drawing
Explorer Window on the View menu you can use that also. In Drawing Explorer
expand 'Foreground Pages' (if the page is a forground and not a background
page), then expand the page name (e.g. Page-1), then Shapes, the shapes
should be named something like Sheet.1, Sheet.2, etc....


Let me know if that helps....

Aaron Rykhus, Visio Support
Microsoft Corporation