I like extending Visio with custom code, and I have been doing it a long time. I progressed from VBA within Visio documents, to VB executable, using a C++ wrapper to register as Visio Add-ons, through VB.net COM add-ins to C# VSTO add-ins. Which ever language and method I use, it seems to me that deployment is always far more more difficult than it should be. Even though it has got simpler with VS 2010, there are still some gotchas…
[Read more…] about Deploying a Visio 2007 or 2010 VSTO add-in with Visual Studio 2010
Archives for November 2011
Linking Excel Named Ranges in Visio
I have been using worksheets and ranges in Excel with Visio’s Link Data to Shapes (in the Pro and Premium editions) for several years, but recently encountered a problem with the recently added structured references in Excel. Fortunately, with the help of my colleague John Goldsmith, we found a solution.
Normally, I create tables in Excel worksheets with the column headings in the first row, so I could use the worksheet name in the Link Data to Shapes function in Visio. However, I wanted to have an extra row above the table headers for a recent project, so I wanted to use named ranges, defined with any rows above the table headers omitted. When I went to connect these ranges using the Data Selector in Visio, I found that all of my named ranges, except one (StepIds), were missing from the list of worksheets and ranges: