read spreadsheet from VISIO

INTRO
I'm a long time Visio user, limited to creating electrical diagrams
and system interface drawings etc. I have created some of my own
shapes. Now I need to do something a bit more hard core!

THE POINT
I have created a cabling diagram that has identifying text (labels)
for each component in the signal path; cable numbers, connector
numbers etc. The system contains 555 duplicate paths. In Visio we
have created a diagram showing one "example" path and have a
supporting spreadsheet that lists all other components.

I would like to create an interactive sheet that I could click a drop
down menu for the component at the end of one of the circuits lets say
end device #5 and have the diagram fill the drawing with the data
corresponding to device 5.

Can I do this in Visio, if so can someone point me in the right
direction.

I have used VBA for excel

It sounds as if what you want to create is a template with custom/user
properties for objects that have a direct correlary to cells in the
spreadsheet. i.e. column 1 will always be the parameter 1 for object A in
the drawing, column 2 will always be parameter 2 for object A, etc. and you
just want to populate the data.
That's fairly straight forward in Visio. You can check either David Edson's
book or Graham Widemans for examples of working back and forth. David has
some good examples of integrating MS Office.
"Robert" wrote in message
om...
INTRO
I'm a long time Visio user, limited to creating electrical diagrams
and system interface drawings etc. I have created some of my own
shapes. Now I need to do something a bit more hard core!

THE POINT
I have created a cabling diagram that has identifying text (labels)
for each component in the signal path; cable numbers, connector
numbers etc. The system contains 555 duplicate paths. In Visio we
have created a diagram showing one "example" path and have a
supporting spreadsheet that lists all other components.

I would like to create an interactive sheet that I could click a drop
down menu for the component at the end of one of the circuits lets say
end device #5 and have the diagram fill the drawing with the data
corresponding to device 5.

Can I do this in Visio, if so can someone point me in the right
direction.

I have used VBA for excel

"It sounds as if what you want to create is a template with
custom/user
properties for objects that have a direct correlary to cells in the
spreadsheet. i.e. column 1 will always be the parameter 1 for object A
in
the drawing, column 2 will always be parameter 2 for object A, etc.
and you
just want to populate the data."

Thats exactly what I want, thanks for pointing me to the books. Ill be
checking them out ASAP

Robert




"Al Edlund" wrote in message ...
It sounds as if what you want to create is a template with custom/user
properties for objects that have a direct correlary to cells in the
spreadsheet. i.e. column 1 will always be the parameter 1 for object A in
the drawing, column 2 will always be parameter 2 for object A, etc. and you
just want to populate the data.
That's fairly straight forward in Visio. You can check either David Edson's
book or Graham Widemans for examples of working back and forth. David has
some good examples of integrating MS Office.
"Robert" wrote in message
om...
INTRO
I'm a long time Visio user, limited to creating electrical diagrams
and system interface drawings etc. I have created some of my own
shapes. Now I need to do something a bit more hard core!

THE POINT
I have created a cabling diagram that has identifying text (labels)
for each component in the signal path; cable numbers, connector
numbers etc. The system contains 555 duplicate paths. In Visio we
have created a diagram showing one "example" path and have a
supporting spreadsheet that lists all other components.

I would like to create an interactive sheet that I could click a drop
down menu for the component at the end of one of the circuits lets say
end device #5 and have the diagram fill the drawing with the data
corresponding to device 5.

Can I do this in Visio, if so can someone point me in the right
direction.

I have used VBA for excel