Professional Development with Visio® 2000

Multiple Text Blocks

Under Visio 5.0 and earlier, the rule was always “one SmartShape symbol, lne text block.” Period. End of story. Groups did not contain their own text block. If you desired multiple text blocks within a symbol, you created a group shape and then had the ability to sub-select the sub-symbol and enter text into that sub-symbol's text block. The advantage of this scheme was that you could, through the use of multiple text blocks, position differing items of text in exacting positions within or outside of the confines of the symbol's geometry. The disadvantage of this scheme was that when a person selected a group symbol and simply began typing, the top-most sub-symbol in the z-order accepted the text by default. This often caused ...