This is great! I’ve been using the Page Numbers code for a while, but now i want to track version numbers.

For example:
I create a document and it automatically comes up as Version 1.0. Every time i edit that document, i write on the revision notes that version 1.1 contains these edits. But currently i have to go through every page and change the version number from 1.0 to 1.1, etc. When i have a 20 page document, this is quite time consuming.

Is there a way to automate this process?

Thanks for responding. You are right. I’ve got one title page with information like revision, description, creation date, name, …. These information shall be displayed on all pages. Every time the document will be changed the user needs to add a new revision, the revision data and so on. But instead of changing each page the user shall change date on the first page (title page) and all other pages in the visio document shall change accordingly.

Right now I’m working with the ShapeSheet and I’m refering to cells. I also saw that by copying and pasting (regardless of pasting it to the same page or to any other page in the document) the reference is lost.

(The title page contains a sheet with ID 50)
Here my code for the ‘Text Field’ section for all other pages in the document which are refering to the title page:
Pages[Page-1]!Sheet.50!Prop.Description_1

And I found sth out: If you use the duplicate option (Edit–>Duplicate or ‘CTRL+D’ Visio creates a copy of your selected sheets and pastes it on the same page. With the duplicate option Visio still knows where the references are. As you said then afterwards you can drag and drop it to any other page.

Thanks again and I hope I could help anyone who wanted to know the sth about it.

Regards,
Bob

You could just put a shape on a background page, if the information isn’t changing from page to page.

But it sounds like you want to have a “control” page or a title-page.

So say you’ve got a shape on the title page, and it has an id of 4. You enter some info into that shape’s text block.

You could make another shape on another page, then “Insert > Field” this custom formula:

=SHAPETEXT(Pages[Page-1]!Sheet.4!TheText)

The problem is that the reference seems to break every time you copy it to a new page (ie: copying breaks the formula.) But if you DRAG the shape to a new page, the reference stays intact.

Another technique is to add user-cells to the document’s ShapeSheet, then refer to them.

The doc ShapeSheet can be found via: Shift + Window > Show ShapeSheet. References to cells in the doc ShapeSheet seem to be more robust, and are written like this: TheDoc!User.Row_1, etc.

This is a great webpage and all your tutorials are excellent. Can I ask you something? I want to create a smart shape which will placed on each page of my visio document. The user shall put his information on the first page and all the other pages shall have the same information like the first one. Is there any way to link the shape from page X to X+20 back to the first page? If so, what is the syntax for this? Do you know what I mean? In the former tutorials you linked your shape always to the same page and I was wondering if it is possible to link it to a different page.

Could you help me with this?

Thanks in advance, Bob

I was just curious if pagenumber() triggers off the pages as ordered in the doc or triggers off the name of the page.

So in essence, pagenumber() is the relative order, regardless of actual page name, of the pages in the document.

I guess something like pagename() would return the name of the current page.

In a Visio document if you move a page named “Page-1″ so that it is between “Page-2″ and “Page-3″, then it becomes, numerically, page #2 in the document. “2″ becomes #1, and “3″ stays #3.

What happens if the pages have names…not page x but cool pic 1