Visio 2010: replace a shape

Question

In Visio 2010, how can I change the shape of a single element?

If I create a new one, I'd have to re-apply text, connections and format.

I am fairly sure there is no way to directly do this in Visio. It may be possible to come close to this feature by writing some code using Visio's VBA support - however that would be a relatively complex task. Can you explain more about why it is you need to do this? Perhaps we can find some other options that will help. — saveenr, Oct 11 '11 at 03:33

Alexander Galkin · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-21T10:50:27.293

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I asked this question directly to the Program Manager of Visio 2010 at Microsoft during an internal MS event on campus and the answer was: "This is not possible". I have been missing this feature since Visio 2003 and hope that it will be finally added in the next version of Office.

edited Dec 21 '11 at 10:50

answered Dec 21 '11 at 10:04

Alexander Galkin

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__NOTICE__ - This is no longer the correct answer. The feature has been added – FastAl Jun 20 '19 at 16:09
@FastAl: that is not true, the feature was NOT added to Visio 2010! – uceumern Feb 07 '20 at 08:36
What I meant to say was they added the feature to Visio 2003 like the answerer had wished for. And now I am learning that software companies don't do that kind of thing? Darn, I need to go back to school! I guess I can't assume readers will know to look in newer versions of office... – FastAl Feb 13 '20 at 20:37

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 27 '20 at 05:13

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An update: this feature was added to Visio 2013

See: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/officedevdocs/change-shapes-in-visio-2013

edited Feb 27 '20 at 05:13

Jon

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answered Feb 08 '13 at 08:12

saveenr

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Thanks for the info! Oh finally! Good thingI'm already on Office 2013. – peterchen Feb 08 '13 at 10:30

Franck Dernoncourt · Answer 3 · 2019-07-09T03:15:04.000

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The "Change Shape" feature was introduced in Microsoft Visio 2013. Demo:

edited Jul 09 '19 at 03:15

answered Apr 26 '18 at 02:39

Franck Dernoncourt

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Exactly what i was looking for.. – grv_9098 Aug 10 '18 at 14:33

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 15 '15 at 14:14

Following is an Excerpt from here : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officedevdocs/archive/2012/08/23/change-shapes-in-visio-2013.aspx

Visio 2013 introduces a "Change Shape" feature that enables you to swap out a selected shape or group of shapes in the drawing with another type of shape. The new shapes can retain the position, connections, formatting, shape text, and/or shape data of the originals.

Note: You can only replace 2D shapes with other 2D shapes (like a Decision shape for a Process shape) and 1D shapes with other 1D shapes (replacing one type of connector with another). You cannot replace a connector with a rectangle, as an example.

Does anyone know how to use this functionality using VBA - the Shapes.ReplaceShape does not seem to handle existing connectors. — Hightower, Jul 25 '16 at 13:30

Visio 2010: replace a shape

4 Answers4

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