Microsoft® Office Visio® 2003 Inside Out

Entering Data in Shapes

A shape becomes a data-entry form when you enter values, or data, for its custom properties. In the Custom Properties window, the label is the name of a particular property, and the value is the information you type or select for a given property. The part of the custom property where you type is sometimes referred to as a field, because custom properties work like database fields. For example, in an office plan, you can enter a value for a furniture shape’s Manufacturer property to create a visual record of purchase orders. In an organization chart, you can enter telephone numbers to create a visual employee phone list, as Figure 6-9 shows. After you enter values for custom properties, you can extract them in a report, ...