Thursday, September 20, 2012

MS Visio: Editing Text inside an Off-Page Reference

I am now learning MS Visio and need to become my office’s expert.  I’ve built a few flowcharts, but I keep wanting to improve the readability.  Today, I was creating a flowchart to explain working with our student database.  I wanted to boldface the name of each screen so it is easier to see.  I thought of this after I had already begun, so first I edited my processes, then my decisions and my sub-processes.  All that was left was editing my “off-page references.”  Well, I couldn’t get into the text to edit.  I think we all wish Microsoft would be more consistent, right?
 
Page 1 OPRIn the other shapes or arrows, you just double-click the text to select it and edit.  In Microsoft’s supreme wisdom, this does not work in the “off-page reference.”  (That really is a silly name; may I call them OPR?)
 
Creating a new off-page reference involves recreating the hyperlinks, etc., so that was not the answer.   Googling doesn’t usually help much in Visio because it has a relatively small user base, at least compared to MS Word and Excel.  I tried anyway, and voila!
 
I found the hint on an obscure bulletin board:  there is a “text” tool in the Home tab, tools section.
Visio Home Text
 
Click on the OPR shape, then click the text tool and edit away!
  Page 1 OPR bold
 
Oh, and by the way, click back on the Cursor Tool to return to normal.
Visio Pointer