MS Visio 2013 Shape Data Sets

Question

I am creating a custom Shape Data Set for a MS Visio 2013 document of Data Center rack diagrams.

I created the Shape Data Set on one of the shapes, saved it and then imported it into the shapes in the document. The issue that I have is, my boss wants the Shape fields in the specific order as entered in the first Shape. All of the Shapes that had the Data imported, are listed alphabetically.

Is there a way prevent Visio from changing it to an alphabetical listing?

Answer 1

1. Visio does not change order of properties when you link them to data (if they already exist in the shape and you just bind them to a data source), it also does not change the order when you define a set and then apply it to other shapes.

2. You can define the order of properties using "SortKey" attribute.