bVisual

Introducing a free Visio Report Runner application

David Parker — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 09:17:49 +0000

AI is changing the world and how we should approach it. So I decided to see if I could get Claude Sonnet 4.6 Agent to completely write an application for me, and I mean completely. The application is written in Python by Claude, and I have not written a single line. The code is available […]

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Protecting the integrity of custom Visio masters

David Parker — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:42:05 +0000

All of my Visio solutions contain custom masters because this is the best way to create smart shapes that respond to user’s needs. This usually means creating Shape Data, User-defined Cells and Action rows that govern aspects of the shape with formulas designed to provide an efficient user interface. As a developer I sometimes forget […]

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Docked Stencils in Visio for the Web

David Parker — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:42:51 +0000

Visio desktop has multiple ways to specify the folder where docked stencils can be found, but, as far as I am aware, Visio for the Web only has one. I mostly create VSTO add-ins for Visio desktop, and I use Visio desktop as a studio for creating templates for Visio for the Web. Often, I […]

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My Visio Books and Old pre-C# Work

David Parker — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:52:50 +0000

We, as a family, are in the process of de-cluttering our house for hopefully a move closer to the south coast, so I decided to take a photo of my Visio books collection, and as you can see, back in the mid-1990’s, I started reading and learning from other peoples works, and then progressed to […]

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Migrating from Lucidchart to Visio?

David Parker — Mon, 25 May 2026 20:37:27 +0000

My fellow Visio MVP, Michel Laplane, and I recently converted and transformed 15k Lucidchart documents to Microsoft Visio for a large multi-national organization. This was approximately 4 years after they had moved from Visio to Lucidchart! I do not know the full reason behind these changes in technology, and I do not have a particular […]

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Creating Boolean Context Menus in Visio

David Parker — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:42:12 +0000

Over the many, many years that I have been creating Microsoft Visio solutions, I have had to create numerous right-mouse context menus for shapes to control their Shape Data values. Over that time, patterns emerge, so this article is highlighting three different appearances for simple Boolean values, otherwise known as True/False or Yes/No values, and […]

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Installing Visio Templates and Stencils

David Parker — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 20:30:13 +0000

I was recently on holiday but needed to update an installation of Visio Templates and Stencils for all languages. I use Advanced Installer in Enterprise mode so that I can edit the PublishComponent table like I have described in my earlier article ( see Using Advanced Installer with Visio VSTO Add-Ins – bVisual )Unfortunately I […]

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Creating a Dynamic connector master automatically

David Parker — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 17:09:08 +0000

I have been creating Microsoft Visio solutions for 30 years now … my first was in 1996! I have been an advocate for custom Masters from the very start, every since I learnt how editing the Master can automatically update all of its instance shapes can be automatically updated throughout the document. Whenever you drag […]

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A visual exploration of Penrose Tiling in Visio

David Parker — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 22:09:41 +0000

Maybe it is because I used to be a building architect, but I have always been fascinated by the relationship between numbers and visualisations. Perhaps the most famous one is the Golden Ratio which has been used as the basis of many building designs and art pieces. It is often recognised to create a harmony […]

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How SVG in Visio can cause a Shape.BoundingBox(…) error

David Parker — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 15:25:58 +0000

I have used Visio’s Shape.BoundingBox(…) for many, many years and I cannot ever recall it failing, but I have now managed to create some shapes that cause it to error. This caused many hours of confusion, so I nearly abandoned using the method, until I discussed it with my fellow Visio MVP, John Goldsmith (see […]

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