Visio External Data Linking Creates New Shape Data

Question

Hello,

When bringing in External Data (via Excel) it will give a nice table where you can turn on and off columns displayed in the dataset. Furthermore, you can click and drag the data to a Shape, allowing it to create a link. That all works great for me.

Suppose my External Data table has the following columns visible (enabled):

Name, Age, Eye Color

And my Shape has only:

Name

I do not want the Shape to automagically create two new Shape Data parameters to accept/associate with Age and Eye Color upon linking. Or, if they *must* be created, I would like them to be hidden since I did not intend for them to exist in the first place for that Shape.

The only way I have found to not automatically create Age and Eye Color when linking data is to hide those columns in the External Data list; however, sometimes that information is nice to keep visible even though I don't want to associate it with my shapes.

Is there a way to link only SOME data from External Data to my Shape when linking?

Answer 1

Dear xCoNFuSe

Good day! Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community. We’re happy to help you.

From your description, it seems that you want to hide the related column data when importing in to Visio or only link specific data into Visio Shape.

If my understanding is right, we have also tested it on our side and we may not find the way to achieve your requirement, and as you mentioned above, the only way we can think of is to uncheck specific columns under External Data window. We click the Data tab > Then click the External Data Window check box. > Select the shape. Then if we drag the data to the shape, all the columns will show in the shape, the only way to make the specific data to the shape is to uncheck some columns in the External Data Window, then the column **** will not show in the shape

For the situation you encountered, please accept my apologies for it and I understand it effort on your daily work.

Given this situation, we kindly suggest you send feedback to Visio · Community (microsoft.com) to make our products and services better for you and others. It is the best platform for us to listen to your opinions and make our products better serve you and others. The user voting here can let us better understand what users want, so that we can better improve our products.

Meanwhile, we will keep the thread opening and welcome MVPs who have great ideas about this concern to share in here and hope can help you a little.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. I hope that you are keeping safe and well!

Sincerely,

Stacey | Microsoft Community Moderator

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