What is “Visio”

“Visio” 2007 can be used for making all kinds of drawings, from network diagrams to calendars and office equipment to flowcharts, so that we can visualize information, whether it is complicated or not. You can change text and tables that are hard to understand, “Visio” diagrams display information in such a way that you can understand what they’re trying to convey, at a single glance.

“Visio” 2007 is available in two separate versions:
“Visio” Professional and “Visio” Standard. This latest version contains the same basic functionality as “Visio” Professional, but the number of functions and templates are limited. “Visio” Professional includes advanced functionality such as data connectivity and visualization features that “Visio” Standard 2007 does not support.

This for your information:
I use the Standard version for this course.

When we first open the “Visio” application, we see the “Getting Started with Microsoft Visio” window which is divided into three parts.
On the left, we have the different template categories (1).
Those of you who work with the professional version will find the “Samples” tab under the “Getting Started” tab.
In the middle, we have the recently used templates (2), and on the right, we find the recently opened documents (3).
When you open “Visio” for the first time, the middlde part and the right part are obviously empty, except for some online options displayed in the middle of the window, which seem quite clear to me.
If you want to explore these options, you must be connected to the Internet.

Click “Close” to close the “Getting Started with …” window.
If you want to reopen it later, click on “File” in the “Menu bar”, select “New” from the drop-down menu, and then select “Getting Started”.
The same template categories that are present in the “Getting Started …” window are also found when we click on the “File” tab in the “Menu bar” and select “New”.

The user interface:

The first thing you notice, when you start working with “Visio” is that, unlike the other Office 2007 applications, “Visio” does not have a “Ribbon”.
This might be useful for those of us who still work with applications such as Excel 2003 or Word 2003. Anyways, I’ve been saved a lot of time, since I do not need to explain the “Ribbon” once again.
After closing the “Getting Started …” window, only the application is open.
At the top we have the “Title bar” with the buttons “Minimize”, “Maximize”, and “Close” to the extreme right.
Below this, we have the “Toolbars”, including the “Standard Toolbar” and the “Formatting Toolbar”.
I suppose those who work with “Visio” would’ve worked with other Office applications, so I think its unnecessary to explain about these buttons.
When we start using certain buttons, I will explain them.

If you click on the “View” tab and select “Toolbars” from the drop down menu, we can either display or hide all the various “Toolbars”. Those that are selected in the drop-down menu are displayed. Click on it again in the menu, so that it is deselected.

You cannot close the “Title bar” and the “Menu bar”. I think you’ve already understood that.

Customizing Toolbars:

If you click on the “View” tab, and then select “Customize”, the “Customize” dialog box is opened, having three tabs.
In the “Toolbars” tab we can create a new toolbar. We can also customize an existing toolbar, and delete a previously created toolbar.

To add buttons to a toolbar, open the toolbar, select the second tab, i.e “Commands”, select a category on the left of the dialog box, and drag the required button from the right of the dialog box to the toolbar.

If you want to remove a button from a toolbar, open the “Customize” dialog box again, and then click and drag the button from the toolbar, to any other place.

The third tab, i.e “Options”, has a number of options for customizing the settings of the toolbars and I think that these are quite clear and there is no need for any further explanation.

In “Visio” 2007, as in any other Office 2003 application, the toolbars can be moved by moving the mouse pointer over the dots on the left of the toolbar, and when it changes into a four-headed arrow, click and drag it.

When it is disconnected, placz the mouse pointer in the title bar and click and drag to where you want it.

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