Visio Pro 2016 Database modeling subscription failure

Question

I recently installed Visio Professional 2016 and I get the following error below the ribbon SUBSCRIPTION FEATURE  The Visio add-in for Database Modeling is available only for Visio Pro for O365.  Please upgrade to get this functionality.  I am using version 1807 (Build 10325.20082 Click-to-Run)

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I have Visio Online Plan 2 on monthly update cycle yet I don't see the Database Model Diagram template nor any option to Reverse Engineer. I can connect to Azure SQL DB (the one I was hoping to generate diagram for) but don't get the Database tab at all in Visio. Please help.

Answer 2

Dear Tina,

Thanks for your reply.

There are two things I do not understand about it:

1. We have a Visio Online Plan 2 subscription/license for all our Visio users. However, they use the on-prem version of Visio 2016 Pro with that license. Are you saying that our users must use the cloud version of Visio Online to be able to use the Database Modeler at all?
2. Prior to the July semi-annual release of Office, we used the Database Modeler addin succesfully to create database diagrams from existing databases. According to July's release notes (see below), this functionality is now built into Visio. One would assume that the same diagrams created with the addin should be editable with the built-in database modeling functionality. How can we edit the existing database models?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/semi-annual-channel-2018 Visio: Feature updates

• Built-in database model diagrams: Use the new Database Model Diagram template to accurately model your database as a Visio diagram. No add-in required.

Answer 3

Tina,

So what you are saying is that the Visio Professional 2016 will not allow me to manipulate database objects even though Microsoft still has the Visio Add-in for Database Modeling available for download.

My only option is to throw away the money I spent for the Visio Professional 2016 package and "upgrade" to Visio Online Plan 2?

I do not need to reverse engineer databases, I need to be able to manipulate relational entities in the database diagrams I generate.  Are all these database features stripped from Visio Professional 2016?  If Visio Professional 2016 does not support Database Modeling why is a template still available for use?

Answer 4

Hi DWalk202,

As described in the following article, the Visio Add-in for Database Modeling only works with the subscription Visio Online Plan 2.

The Reverse Engineer Wizard isn't available in Visio Professional 2016 or Visio Standard 2016.

Reverse engineer an existing database into a database model

Regards,

Tina