simple shapes from linked data in visio

Question

I connected my visio professional 2010 diagram to an excel sheet with a list of items with some properties.

I want to display nice rectangles with the items name and some properties in it.

When I link a data item to a plain rectangle, the data appears but I am not able to format and configure it properly (e.g. fonts, colours, positions in the box).

I found general instructions how to link data and very complex documentation around shapesheet (whose complexity is a bot overwhelming for a visio newbie)

How can I - in a simple way - create boxes from linked data that have for example the item's name in bold, horizontally centered, at the top of the box, and some of its attributes (with label) in a smaller font below ?

Somehow I think of a preconfigured template of such a shape whose text-data can be populated semi-automatically from excel data following this process:

Preparation:

1. Link excel data to diagram (clear)
2. Create shape template (unclear)

Doing:

1. link data items to shape instances (clear)
2. Free Visual Layout (clear)

Answer 1

1. Do preparation step 1 to ONE shape. Remove the data graphics Select the shape, menu insert / field. Insert the desired shape data from the list. (https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Insert-a-text-field-into-a-shape-0225c22e-3e5e-4ea7-9ca0-1ec91386cb1e)
2. Show the document stencil or create a new stencil.
3. drop the shape into the stencil. It is now a Master
4. Having the master selected in the stencil, drop rows from the external data window onto your drawing. Visio will use that master as standard shape.

HTH, Y.

Answer 2

The solution is to create your own "data graphics". Actually Visio's help is sufficient to get it going. Searching for that key word in Visio help or support.office.com yields instructions how to use it.