Welcome to the Visio 2003 tutorial. To open a new Visio drawing, go to the Start menu,and select programs Microsoft Office, Visio. What you will see on your screen is something similar to this. For purposes of this tutorial, we will be creating a flowchart, so you would select Business Process, then Basic Flowchart. Let's take a few moments to get familiar with the Visio interface. The toolbars across the top of the screen are similar to other Microsoft programs such as Word and PowerPoint. If you have used these programs before, you may notice a few different functionalities, which we will explore later. The left side of the screen shows menus specific to the type of diagram you are creating. In this case we see Arrow Shapes,
Backgrounds, Basic Flowchart Shapes, Borders and Titles. The center of the screen shows the diagram workspace, which includes the actual diagram page as well as some blank space adjacent to the page.
To create a new diagram, select a shape from the shapes menu; click, drag, and drop. Because we are building a flowchart, we're going to want all of our shapes to be connected. So I'm going to click the connector tool, select another shape. You'll notice that Visio has automatically placed an arrow in between the two shapes. As long as that connector tool is highlighted, Visio will continue to add arrows in between the shapes. So I'm going to add a few more shapes to our diagram. We're going to outline a ten step process here, so go ahead and collect all of the appropriate shapes and place them on the diagram. And when we are done placing all ten shapes, go ahead and turn off the connector tool by clicking on the pointer tool. One of the great things about Visio is that it allows you to change the size or placement of a shape, and the connector still remains intact. So, for example, if want to make our first shape bigger, the connector tool is still there. Make this shape longer, or move this shape entirely. All of these connectors are going to stay attached to the shapes.
Once you have your shapes resized and placed where you want them, it's time to add text to your diagram and format that text. Begin by double-clicking on the shape and adding your text. What you will notice is that the format, the default format, for Visio is Arial 8 point font. That may or may not be what you want to stick with. You can go ahead and change the format right here. But the most efficient way to do this is to enter all of your text and then go back and format it all at once. So we'll add a little bit of text just to give you an idea of how this process goes. Okay, the way you're going to do this is go back to view, zoom, whole page. Select your first shape that you want to change the font, hold down the shift key, and click on all of the other shapes that you wish to reformat. Go up to the toolbar, pick the font you would like and the size you would like. And all of your shapes have been reformatted. You may realize at some point that you have left out a shape. Visio provides an easy solution for this. All you need to do is click on the shape you would like to add, drag it, and hover over the connector you would like to place it on, and you will see the scissors icon appear. Go ahead and drop the shape and it fits in easily. The only thing you would need to do is go ahead and reformat this particular shape for the text because you will see it has gone back to the default of Arial 8 point.
Visio provides several standard backgrounds which you can add to your diagram. From the menu on the left side of the screen, click on backgrounds, select a design that you like, drag, and drop. You'll notice that Visio has automatically fit the background to your existing diagram. Visio has also added a tab at the bottom of your screen labeled "background". Your existing work from earlier is on page one. For the most part, you'll be working with page one, but you always have the option to add content to the background page as well. The important thing to remember is that whichever page you add content to is the page on which you will need to edit that content.
The most efficient way to add color to your drawing is to use the color scheme functionality, which will change your shapes, background, and text all at once. Right-click on your workspace, select color schemes, and select a scheme from the menu. Press apply to see if you like it, and just play around until you find one that you like. Press okay. Sometimes you need to change the color of one or two shapes for impact. To do this, select the shape you wish to change, then click on the paint bucket tool. Select a color, and only the shape you had selected will change.
You may want to add a hyperlink to your diagram. To do that, click on the left menu "Borders and Titles", go all the way down to the bottom, select a hyperlink icon, drag and drop into your shape, and the hyperlink dialog box will appear. Type in your url, click on okay, and your hyperlink has been inserted.
Once you've completed your Visio drawing, it can be printed out just like any other Microsoft document. From the toolbar select file and print. Visio drawings can also be inserted into other Microsoft Office documents such as PowerPoint or Word. To do this, go to your toolbar, select edit, and copy drawing. Then go to your PowerPoint or Word document. Select where you would like to insert your Visio diagram, and simply click edit, paste. One of the nice things about Visio diagrams, is that they can be edited within other Microsoft Office applications. For example, if you have pasted your Visio drawing into a PowerPoint presentation, but realize that the color schemes do not work well together, you can do what is called in-place editing. To change your drawing, double-click on it while still in PowerPoint, and Visio will open up within PowerPoint and you can make your changes. There is no need to go back to the original drawing, make your changes, and repeat the copy/paste procedures. You can do it all right within PowerPoint.