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Visio Shapes pane is missing in Visio 2010

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If you don’t see any shapes window on the left of a new drawing after you upgrade to Visio 2010 go to the View tab, click on Task Panes, and click on Shapes

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Shapes window missing above

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You should now have the shapes pane. This is a toggle, on/off setting. If you click on the Shapes option again it turns the shapes pane off.

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I’ve seen this with several customers upgrading from a previous version, like 2007, to 2010. I haven’t been able to recreate the issue on any of my systems with an upgrade from 2007 to 2010.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Many thanks. MS Help is completely useless.
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    For you folks who are still experiencing the problem, please try a couple of things. First, try using the keyboard shortcut <Alt><F1>.  (Hold the Alt key and then press the F1 key) This is a toggle of the visibility of the Shapes pane.  There are 3 states: Off, Minimal, and Full. If that still doesn't work, then a more draconian measure is to close Visio 2010, and use the Regedit app to remove the 'Application' registry settings for Visio.
  1. Close Visio
  2. Open Regedit (need to have Administrator permissions)
  3. Go to the following location and delete the "Application" folder to clear the settings:  HKEY_Current_UserSoftwareMicrosoftOffice14.0Visio (You may want to back these up first in case you choose to restore them) Then test Visio, and if the Shapes pane is still not present, try the <Alt><F1> step again. If this still doesn't help, a deeper removal of ALL of the Visio settings would be the next thing to try.

  • Anonymous
    January 12, 2012
    THANK YOU, THANK YOU... I have been messing with the applications for days. I have another issue, I have V2000 that will not print, I upgraded because I figure the OS does not handle the code. I can open Files(V2000) in 2010 but they do not print, even if I paste into ie WORD. Is there some bug that will not allow MS VISIO to apply older versions? I hate having to redo all the work I did in the older version.. thx

  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2012
    Thanks a lot.....

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2012
    Thank you, was the first article I pulled to resolve this issue for a user and it worked! Good job.

  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2012
    Thanks this helped.  Adding key words - "shapes window not showing up visio 2010" "visio 2010 how to open stencil"

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2012
    yeah, I've clicked it on.  I've clicked it off.  I've looked for at least 2 hours for an answer as to why I cannot get the shapes pane to appear.  I've reinstalled Visio 2010.  I've downloaded the patch.  and still,.... nothing.   SO frustrated right now.

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2012
    The same issue for me.  Toggling on or off the shapes in the task panes doesn't do anything at all.  My shapes are still missing.  I was using this version of Visio for about a year and this happened out of the blue. Long time Visio user.  I have had 4 fellow developers look at it and they can't figure it out either.  reinstall or repair does not fix it.   Very frustrating to pay hundreds of bucks for something that can't seem to work.

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 04, 2013
    Great thank you, been trying to work out this all day.  Brilliant!

  • Anonymous
    January 13, 2013
    Thank you very much for your help.

  • Anonymous
    January 14, 2013
    thank you!  

  • Anonymous
    January 25, 2013
    Worked exactly how you said. :-)) Thanks very much for sharing this information which is not on the Visio Help.

  • Anonymous
    February 08, 2013
    Thank you !!

  • Anonymous
    April 11, 2013
    thanks a lot.it was agreat help....:-)

  • Anonymous
    May 07, 2013
    Thanks a lot !

  • Anonymous
    June 27, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2013
    Thank you!!

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2013
    worked!. had upgraded from WinXP Visio 2007 to Win7 Visio 2010.

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2014
    thank you!!!! I agree...MS Help is pretty helpless

  • Anonymous
    March 26, 2014
    THANKS!!! Couldn't find it anywhere or in help!

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2014
    THAAAAAAANNNKS !!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2014
    Thanks for the Alt F1 tip - struggled for ages before I found this!

  • Anonymous
    September 04, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2014
    It worked for me! :-) Thank you!

  • Anonymous
    January 25, 2015
    Great........!!!!

  • Anonymous
    February 02, 2015
    Phew! Thank you - saved me from several more hours of repeatedly rephrasing the problem in the hope the Help would help!

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2015
    When I click task panes and then shapes nothing happens.

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2015
    gr8 thank you keep up your good work

  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2015
    Thank you so much!!!..i have tried every thing but wasn't able to identify the missing shapes option in the visio.

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2015
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 18, 2015
    super

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2015
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 16, 2015
    Thank you!

  • Anonymous
    November 20, 2015
    Thank you! Very helpful