Editing Linked Data

Question

I linked a drawing to a spreadsheet that I don't own and have no control over.  The source of the data changed in that some fields that had been present disappeared and the data reappeared in other columns.  I went back to the data link wizard and made the necessary changes.  The drawing now tries to link to both the old and the new spreadsheet.  How can I discard the links to the old data without having to start with a fresh copy of the drawing (and manually re-link the icons)?

Answer 1

Hi,

I created a simple datasource and visio drawing to test the issue, it worked fine.

Then I recommend we connect the Excel owner to share the permission.

After that we could refresh the data.

Regards,

George Zhao

Answer 2

Yes, I did that, however it does not remove previous fields from the shape.  So if my original data has these fields:

"This"     "That"

and my new data has only one field

"The other"

My shape now has the following three fields:

"This"   "That"   "The other"

What I'm looking for is to delete the original fields so that I have only have "The other."

Answer 3

Hi,

Please check the "Overwrite user changes to shape data" option.

Regards,

George Zhao

Answer 4

Thank you for your reply, George. 

I did as you suggested, using the Refresh data window, and had successfully added my new external data, however, the old data remained "stuck" in the refresh window.  I was able to remove the old data by means of the External Data window at the bottom.  I unlinked all the data and then relinked, selecting my desired fields.  I then used the Automatically Link dialog to relink the data based on the primary key of the table. 

Now I have a new problem.  Linking data adds to what exists in the Shape Data.  For example my old data had a field called "Role."  That field has been renamed to "Function Summary."  After re-linking all the shapes on the page now have both "Role" and "Function Summary" in their Shape Data fields.  I need an option to delete existing shape data before writing the new data, or at the very least, to define the Shape Data table for every instance of a particular icon.  This would also help with stencils with predefined but unused shapes.

Answer 5

Hi,

According to your description, my understanding is that you want to refresh the data where changed in Excel file.

Mothed1:

I recommend we use “Refresh” command. Please refer to the following picture:

location:DATA Tab>External Data group>Refresh All>Refresh Date>Configure

 We may custom the range or sheet which you want.

Mothed2:

I suggest we re-link the Excel file and custom the data again.

Please refer to the following link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296528/en-us

Regards,

George Zhao