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Avatar of Corrine Streff
Corrine Streff

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Shapes affected after applying color to a layer

I am a Microsoft Instructor of 21 years but have not been able to find an answer to a question I received in class today. After applying color to a Layer in a Workflow Diagram (We were on the Work Flow Steps stencil), only part of the shapes were outlined in the color - the rest of the shape disappeared. For example, one shape is called "Agreement" and is an image of two people with callouts over their heads and a checkmark in the middle. After applying color to the layer, only the checkmark remains (the people and callouts disappear).

Do you know if this is by design? Or is it a known issue in Visio 2016?

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.
Avatar of Scott Helmers
Scott Helmers
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Thanks for providing a very complete description of the problem. To answer your first question, no, I'm quite sure this behavior is not by design! I suspect the shape designers simply didn't think about the effects of applying layer colors to this set of shapes.

I don't know whether this is a known issue for Visio 2016, however, I'll send a message to the Visio product team at Microsoft to report the issue in case they are not aware of it. Realistically, I think redesigning the workflow shapes will be assigned a low priority, so I would recommend that you choose another diagram type for the lesson on layer colors. ;-)
After discussion with other Visio experts, the issue here is that 1) layer colors only change line color and not fill color; and 2) many of the work flow shapes include components that do not have lines, e.g., the person and callout parts of the Agreement shape. That combination accounts for what you've observed.

Is this a bug or bad shape design? I suspect that's a question without a real answer. It's certainly a design that does not support assigning layer colors, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad design...

As I suggested above, I think your best bet is use a different diagram type for showing the affects of layer colors.
Corrine -- if the info above was useful, can you close the question? Thanks.
Are you still out there, Corrinne? It would be great if you could either close the question and award points, or ask for more details. Thanks.
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