Enabling Your Macros and Therefore the Direct Access to the Online Help

Obsolete: This feature is for Amazing Visio version 1.1 only.  Please click here for details.

This menu offers direct access to the online help, such as this page.

Amazing Visio uses macro scripts to dynamically create the help menu when a drawing is opened.  In order for Visio to run these scripts, you need to click Enable Macros to run the scripts.

Caution: Click the Enable Macros button only when you are sure that the drawing is yours or is from a trusted source.  Otherwise, click the Disable Macros button.

To turn on this warning and to create the online help menu:

Step 1: Enable Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications

1. Choose menu Tool > Options.

2. Click the Advanced tab. 

3. Select Enable Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications then click OK.

Step 2: Enable Macros

1) For Visio 2000:

1. Choose menu Tools > Options.

2. Click the Advanced tab on the Options window.

3. Check the Macro Virus Protection checkbox.

2) For Later Versions:

1. Choose Tools > Macros > Security.

2. Choose Medium for Security Level.

If you don't want to enable macros:

1. Disable macro access completely for all Visio Drawings with Step 1 (unselect the option instead), or disable the special macro for all Easy Stencil related drawings (please click here for details).

2. Access the online help by double clicking the Amazing Visio Help link on your desktop or in your Amazing Visio program folder (Start > All Programs > Amazing Visio).

Alternatively: You can remove the stencil amazing_global to disable the warning message for the current drawing only:

1. Click your right mouse button on the stencil title Amazing Global.

2. Choose Close.

3. Save the drawing.

Why the warning message still pops up even after I have taken away amazing_global?

There are different reasons:

1. One or more of the shapes you are using have built-in macros.  For example these ones:
     To find out: Drag one of the shapes (The first two are available on all the Amazing Visio stencils) and drop it to your drawing.  A window shows for you to enter information.  This indicates that some built-in logic is running.  Remove the shape(s) from your drawing to stop the warning message.

2. You have used the Visual Basic Editor to create macros for your drawing.   Note that Visio will still think that there are macros in your drawing even if you have deleted them completely or you have just saved your project once without creating any macro at all.  To stop the warning message:

   1. Ensure that there won't be any useful macros you want to keep before continue.

   2. Create a new drawing and copy all the pages and stencils over.

   3. Or if you are using Visio 2002 or later:

      1. Save the drawing with the XML format.

      2. Use the Notepad to open the file. 

      3. Delete anything between <VBProjectData> and </VBProjectData>, including these two tags.  Save it.

      4. Open the XML file with Visio and save it as a regular drawing file.

See also: "amazing_global" - A Special Amazing Visio Stencil to Offer Online Help, Setting Up the Direct Access to the Online Help