Indenting multiple tree control items in Visio

The wireframing template in Visio has a treeview control to that allows you to add and remove items, and set their respective indent levels. By default you can only adjust a single item at a time and even if you create a multiple selection, only the primary item is effected. A forum question asked how you could make a single change to multiple items and I thought I would write a quick bit of code to show how you might go about it.

The Visio tree control

The tree control in Visio, (found in the ‘Controls’ stencil) makes use of the structured diagramming functionality introduced in 2010 and is a ‘List’ type. Basically, an outer List shape (green outline below) hosts a number of tree control item shapes and each of these can have an indent level set via the context menu:

If you have a look inside the ShapeSheet, you’ll see that these indent related context menu items change a couple of other cells in the shape to alter its position (at least the sub-shape positions) and size. Here’s a screenshot of the formula for the ‘Increase Indent’ Action cell:

The first SETF function is basically pushing an incremented value into the TreeLevel user cell and this is followed by a second SETF pushing a new calculated width into the Width cell. The Decrease formula is almost identical, just with the values heading in the opposite direction.

Code options

So in terms of creating some code, this is just a case of getting hold of the selected shapes, looping through each one and setting the appropriate values.

Given, though, that all of the correct logic is already built into the shape, my first approach was to just fire the context menu item using the Trigger method of the Cell object. This works well and allows you to keep the code fairly agnostic about how the indent logic works - which I like. The downside is that it appears not to play very happily with Undo functionality, so I’m also going to show a second option that, for my liking, has way too much knowledge about the internal workings of the shape, but, it does work with Undo. Which one you choose or modify is up to you.

So here’s the cell trigger version:

Public Sub IncreaseTreeItemsIndent()
    Call ChangeTreeItemsIndent(True)
End Sub


Public Sub DecreaseTreeItemsIndent()
    Call ChangeTreeItemsIndent(False)
End Sub


Private Sub ChangeTreeItemsIndent(IsIncrease As Boolean)
Dim procText As String
If IsIncrease Then
    procText = "Increase tree items indent"
Else
    procText = "Decrease tree items indent"
End If

If ActiveWindow.Type <> VisWinTypes.visDrawing Then
    MsgBox "Please select a drawing window to use this procedure.", vbExclamation, procText
Else
    Dim sMenuName As String
    If IsIncrease Then
        sMenuName = "Increase Indent"
    Else
        sMenuName = "Decrease Indent"
    End If

    Dim shpTreeItem As Shape
    For Each shpTreeItem In ActiveWindow.Selection
        If shpTreeItem.Master.NameU = "Tree control item" Then
            Dim iTargetRow As Integer
            iTargetRow = GetActionRowIndex(shpTreeItem, sMenuName)
            If iTargetRow >= 0 Then
                If shpTreeItem.CellsSRC(visSectionAction, iTargetRow, visActionDisabled).ResultIU = False Then
                    shpTreeItem.CellsSRC(visSectionAction, iTargetRow, visActionAction).Trigger
                End If
            End If
        End If
    Next shpTreeItem
End If

End Sub
 

Private Function GetActionRowIndex(ByRef shpIn As Visio.Shape, sMenuName As String) As Integer
Dim iRow As Integer
iRow = -1

If Not shpIn Is Nothing Then
    If shpIn.SectionExists(visSectionAction, 0) Then
        Dim i As Integer
        Dim menuCellTxt As String

        For i = 0 To shpIn.Section(visSectionAction).Count - 1
            menuCellTxt = shpIn.CellsSRC(visSectionAction, i, visActionMenu).ResultStrU("")
            If GetCleanMenuText(menuCellTxt) = sMenuName Then
                iRow = i
                Exit For
            End If
        Next i
    End If
End If
 
GetActionRowIndex = iRow

End Function


Private Function GetCleanMenuText(strIn As String) As String
  Dim cleanedStr As String
  cleanedStr = Replace(strIn, "&", "")
  cleanedStr = Replace(cleanedStr, "_", "")
  GetCleanMenuText = cleanedStr
End Function

…and here’s the second version, which includes Undo:

Public Sub IncreaseTreeItemsIndent()
    Call ChangeTreeItemsIndent(True)
End Sub
 

Public Sub DecreaseTreeItemsIndent()
    Call ChangeTreeItemsIndent(False)
End Sub
 

Private Sub ChangeTreeItemsIndent(IsIncrease As Boolean)
Dim procText As String
If IsIncrease Then
    procText = "Increase tree items indent"
Else
    procText = "Decrease tree items indent"
End If 

If ActiveWindow.Type <> VisWinTypes.visDrawing Then
    MsgBox "Please select a drawing window to use this procedure.", vbExclamation, procText
Else
    Dim lngScopeID As Long
    lngScopeID = Application.BeginUndoScope(procText)
    
    Dim sMenuName As String

    If IsIncrease Then
        sMenuName = "Increase Indent"
    Else
        sMenuName = "Decrease Indent"
    End If

    Dim shpTreeItem As Shape

    For Each shpTreeItem In ActiveWindow.Selection
        If shpTreeItem.Master.NameU = "Tree control item" Then
            Dim cellUserLevel As Cell
            Set cellUserLevel = shpTreeItem.CellsU("User.TreeLevel")
            
            Dim placeHlderAndSpacing As Double
            placeHlderAndSpacing = shpTreeItem.CellsU("User.placeholderWidth").ResultIU _
                                    + shpTreeItem.CellsU("User.spacing").ResultIU

            Dim itemWidthInches As Double
            itemWidthInches = shpTreeItem.CellsU("Width").ResultIU
            If IsIncrease And cellUserLevel.ResultIU < 10 Then
                cellUserLevel.ResultIU = cellUserLevel.ResultIU + 1
                shpTreeItem.CellsU("Width").ResultIU = itemWidthInches + placeHlderAndSpacing
            ElseIf IsIncrease = False And cellUserLevel.ResultIU > 0 Then
                cellUserLevel.ResultIU = cellUserLevel.ResultIU - 1
                shpTreeItem.CellsU("Width").ResultIU = itemWidthInches - placeHlderAndSpacing
            End If
        End If

    Next shpTreeItem

    Application.EndUndoScope lngScopeID, True

End If

End Sub

Note that the second version sets the indent level and width cells directly, and, knows about the maximum indent levels (10), not all of which is a good thing. The first version relies just on invoking the menu item and deals with the max indent by interrogating the the menu items disabled cell (which is where the real logic actually lives.

Extending shape functionality in this way always depends on how it’s intended to be used. If you’re wanting to distribute your solution across a wide audience, then an addin or similar is a better option, but if you’re a sole user then VBA still provides a very viable option.