Microsoft® Office Visio® 2007 Inside Out

Managing Linked Shapes

If you never refresh a shape or update a database after creating a link, your shapes will represent a snapshot of the database. However, if you want to keep shapes in sync with the records they’re linked to, Visio 2007 makes it easy. When you use the Link To ODBC Database command, Visio 2007 adds four commands to each shape’s shortcut menu that you can use to manage and update the link, as Figure 24-9 shows. Visio 2007 always refers to updating shape data as refreshing the shape, whereas using the shape’s values to change the database is referred to as updating the database. To refresh an individual shape or update a database record, right-click a shape, and then choose the command you want.

Figure 24-9. When you link ...