How To Make .......: Visio 2003 For Dummies

When you’re working in Microsoft Visio to create diagrams, use helpful shortcuts to work with shapes, perform common Visio commands, and open dialog boxes. Don't forget the Visio toolbars; they'll help you work quickly and efficiently.

Visio 2003 Keyboard Shortcuts for Working with Shapes

Working with icons, or shapes as Visio likes to call them, to enhance your diagrams will go a lot quicker if you use these handy Visio shortcuts. This guide shows you the keyboard combination and job it does:

Ctrl+A	Select all shapes
Ctrl+C	Copy
Ctrl+D	Duplicate selected shape
Ctrl+G	Group selected shapes
Ctrl+H	Flip selected shape horizontally
Ctrl+J	Flip selected shape vertically
Ctrl+L	Rotate shape left
Ctrl+R	Rotate shape right
Ctrl+Shift+F	Bring selected shape to the front
Ctrl+Shift+B	Send selected shape to the back
Ctrl+Shift+U	Ungroup shapes
Ctrl+V	Paste
Ctrl+X	Cut
F2	Toggle between a shape’s text box and a shape selection
F4	Repeat the last formatting command on a new shape
F7	Check the spelling of the current drawing

Common Visio 2003 Keyboard Shortcuts

When you’re working in Visio, take some time to memorize some keyboard shortcuts for common menu commands and you can decidedly speed up your work. Take a look at this chart of Visio keyboard shortcut combinations:

Ctrl+N	Open a new blank drawing
Ctrl+O	Display the Open dialog box
Ctrl+S	Display the Save As dialog box
Ctrl+V	Paste
Ctrl+X	Cut
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Y	Redo
Ctrl+F6	Switch between open drawings
F6	Cycle through open stencil windows and the task pane
Alt+Tab	Switch between running programs
Ctrl+Shift+left-click	Zoom in
Ctrl+Shift+right-click	Zoom out
Ctrl+F1	Toggle display of the task pane on and off

Opening Dialog Boxes in Visio 2003 with Keyboard Shortcuts

Check out this list of keyboard shortcut combinations to open specific dialog boxes in Visio so you can quickly communicate to the computer and get the desired task completed:

Ctrl+K	Display Hyperlinks dialog box
Ctrl+O	Display Open dialog box
Ctrl+P	Display Print dialog box
F1	Display Help pane
F3	Display the Fill dialog box
Shift+F3	Display Line dialog box
F5	Display drawing in full-screen mode
Shift+F5	Display Page Setup dialog box
Alt+F8	Display Macros dialog box
Alt+F9	Display Snap and Glue dialog box
F11	Display Text dialog box
F12 or Alt+F2	Display Save As dialog box
Ctrl+F4	Close active file
Ctrl+F2	Print Preview

Visio 2003 Toolbars

Visio 2003 has quite a few toolbars, two (Standard and Formatting) are automatically displayed when you start the program. You can hide either of these, and you can display additional toolbars as well. Get to know the toolbar buttons, because it’s much quicker to click a button than select a menu command. Take a look at some of Visio’s toolbars: