Visio: Error Dragging Master from Stencil onto Drawing Window

[ProfessorSax]

I created a Stencil and a number of Master shapes and saved the stencil.
Verified it is good by closing and reopening Visio. When trying to drag a
master onto the drawing window, I get the following error message:

An error (313) occurred during the action Drop On Page.
The master is empty. Nothing will be created.

What is this error, and how do I fix the stencil/masters so that it doesn't
occur?

 

[Chris Roth [MVP]]

Hi TDinDC,

One of the master properties is "Match master by name on drop". If your
masters are set with this option, and you at one point dragged empty masters
into your drawing, perhaps the old/bad versions are in the target document,
and they're empty.

In your document, you'll have to look at the local stencil - the "Document
Stencil", into which all externally-dragged masters are copied. Go to File >
Shapes > Show Document Stencil. See if the masters in this internal stencil
are empty.

--
Hope this helps,

Chris Roth
Visio MVP

Free Visio shapes:
http://www.visguy.com/category/shapes
Visio programming info:
http://www.visguy.com/category/programming/
Other Visio resources:
http://www.visguy.com/visio-links/

 

[Chris Roth [MVP]]

You just created empty icons with masters. You didn't put any shapes inside!

Try doing this as a walk-through example.

1. Draw a rectangle or square or something (Use the Drawing toolbar)
2. Change the color, add some text
3. Drag this shape into a new stencil

Now you can edit the icon, master, etc.

This is the normal work-flow for creating Visio masters.

--
Hope this helps,

Chris Roth
Visio MVP

Free Visio shapes:
http://www.visguy.com/category/shapes
Visio programming info:
http://www.visguy.com/category/programming/
Other Visio resources:
http://www.visguy.com/visio-links/

 

[Barb Way]

This error indicates that one or more of the masters included in a
selection is empty - contains no shapes (lines, text, etc). Check the
objects in your stencil to see if there any which display as a box with an
X across it (denoting empty). Also, check each master in your stencil for
any code / actions which might be trying to cause a secondary drop action
of an empty object.

By the way, KB article 826418 How to troubleshoot damaged drawings in Visio
(http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;826418) discusses
drawing corruption and methods to recover file contents. All Visio
drawings / templates / stencils are actually the same file format
internally, and recognized by Visio via the extension. So all of those
methods are useful for recovering corrupt Stencils and Templates as well as
Drawings. I suggest trying the "Method 1: Save the file as an XML drawing
" option if you think your stencil is corrupt.


Barb Way
Product Support - Visio
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.