Introducing Visio 2010

Visio 2010 brings many new features that make Visio more powerful and easier to use. This post gives a few quick highlights on Visio 2010, along with links to more detailed posts on the Visio team’s official blog.

One of the first things users of Visio 2010 will notice is that menus and toolbars have been replaced by the Office Fluent UI, which makes frequently used commands easier to find. Here is the Home tab of the Visio Ribbon:

The new Ribbon UI is accompanied by a redesigned Shapes Window—shown below in both expanded and collapsed mode—which lets you easily combine your favorite shapes from multiple stencils into one view.

Visio 2010 also includes many enhancements to the diagram creation experience. One such enhancement is the Quick Shapes Mini Toolbar, which allows you to hover over a shape and click to AutoConnect a new shape, as shown in the below screenshot. This is one of the ways Visio has integrated Live Preview into the diagramming experience.

For more information on Visio 2010’s features for editing and organizing the information in diagrams, see the following posts:

• Inserting and Deleting Shapes in Visio 2010
• Cross-functional Flowcharts in Visio 2010
• Organizing Diagrams with Containers

Visio 2010 makes it easier to give a polished, professional look to your diagrams. The “Auto Align & Space” command is one of our new layout features; it cleans up your diagram’s layout while preserving its basic arrangement, as illustrated below:

For more information on how Visio 2010 makes it easier to create visually appealing diagrams, see the following posts:

• Improved Flowchart Routing in Visio 2010
• Applying a Background or Border Design in Visio 2010
• Themes and Live Preview in Visio 2010

The above are only a taste of the new features in Visio 2010. Head on over to Visio Insights and stay posted for more exciting updates!

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Hi RRP -- there's been a few posts on Visio's process capabilities lately on the Visio blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/visio/. You might want to check that out and post specific questions you have to the team there.

• Anonymous
  October 02, 2009
  The Auto Align and space feature works really well and is a great timesaver for topological diagrams such as circuit schematics and flowcharts. Not 100% perfect, for example if your flowchart shapes have widely varying sizes it struggles to get them all lined up so the connectors are straight, but it's really very good and much faster than doing this by hand, especially if you hjave to make a late change to the diagram. It does not operate on all types of diagrams, for example when space planning it would be really good to be able to select a few items of furniture and have it clean them up to be at 90 degree angles and exactly touching but not overlapping. (occasionally these things end up just off, if rotated by hand through 90 they can end up at 89 or 91 for example) You can select multiple items so only those get moved - you can use normal techniques such as CTRL-click, or draw a bounding rectangle with the mouse. It does not matter if you include the connectors or not, it moves the selected shapes and any related connectors, and leaves all other shapes on the sheet alone. This may be useful if you have one area which you have very carefully arranged and want to be left untouched, and don't want it's unusual spacing or layout to affect the auto-adjustment of the rest.

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2009
  Finally Microsoft Visio was appeared in new interface!

• Anonymous
  November 19, 2009
  Can we get back the network discovery and auto-diagramming feature of Visio 2000?  That was the MOST USEFUL FEATURE of VISIO and I've missed it ever since it was removed!

• Anonymous
  November 19, 2009
  Installation of Beta caused my Outlook 2003 SP3 to become unusable. Had to uninstall.

• Anonymous
  November 30, 2009
  Same as Garrett, installation of Beta caused my Outlook 2003 to freeze every time an email was being received.  Could not use Outlook for about 10 mins every time I received an email.  Had to uninstall.  Very disappointing as many of the features look great.

• Anonymous
  December 01, 2009
  Can you post more on BPMN and process modelling? Compatibility and Import/Export with other process modelling applications (like Aris) Thanks.

• Anonymous
  December 08, 2009
  When I searched google for this article, the short description indicated the network discovery feature, however, once i've opened the link, the article did not even mention the outo discovery (a must have for this software and all IT pro's)what's going on with MS? are they loosing it? they alway ask for our input on how to make their software better, and they say that they are listening, but they really don't. Does anyone know if they are planing to include this feature or a point to an article will help. Thx.

• Anonymous
  January 02, 2010
  I agree with what others have already voiced, removing the network auto-discovery and mapping feature was the BIGGEST mistake Microsoft has made with Visio!! Please PLEASE bring it back. As a network administrator, it is a necessary tool for my work. Other programs that provide this function either don't work well or are too expensive!!!

• Anonymous
  January 19, 2010
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 12, 2010
  I copy most of the Visio diagrams I create to the clipboard and then Paste-Special them as EMFs into Word documents.  In Visio 2010, anytime I do this with a moderately complex file, many of the diagram's connecting lines move as though they have 'snapped' to some far off location.  The same thing occurs if I copy the diagram directly into a Word file or if I group the entire diagram.  This has made Visio borderline useless for me and I would really like to email a file to someone at Microsoft for analysis of this bug if possible.  Thanks.

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2010
  Hi Jeff, Sorry to hear you encountered this issue. I would suggest you send your feedback through the Office 2010 Send-a-Smile button in the notification area. You can include your contact information in the issue report. Chris (Visio Program Manager)

• Anonymous
  April 05, 2010
  Installed Visio 2010 beta last night. I worked fine and I liked it's ease of use.  But I found out the my Outlook 2003 no longer would start.  The opening form briefly appeared, them immediately disappeared.  I couldn't find any fixes for this online, so finally had to remove the Visio 2010 beta.   This immediately solved the problem, and Outlook 2003 once again work normall.

• Anonymous
  July 16, 2010
  Earlier versions had additional patterns available in the custom shapes.  Why do the patterns get worse with each version and how can these earlier ones be brought into the new versions.