XL97: Visio 4 Drawing Object Disappears After Being Opened (172411)

SYMPTOMS

If you are editing a Visio 4 Drawing object that has been inserted into a Microsoft Excel 97 worksheet, the object may disappear from the worksheet when you return to Excel.

CAUSE

This problem occurs when you do the following:

Right-click the Visio 4 Drawing object. On the shortcut menu, point to VISIO Object, and click Open.
On the File menu in Visio, click either "Exit & Return To <Bookname>" or Close.

NOTE: This problem does not occur in Microsoft Word 97, Microsoft PowerPoint 97, or earlier versions of Excel, Word, or PowerPoint.

WORKAROUND

To prevent this problem from occurring, edit the Visio 4 Drawing object in place instead of opening it in Visio. To do this, when you right-click the Visio 4 Drawing object and point to VISIO Object, click Edit on the shortcut menu instead of Open. When you deactivate the drawing object, it does not disappear.

If the problem has already occurred, it is not possible to make the drawing object reappear. If you have not saved changes to the workbook that contained the drawing object, you may be able to recover the drawing object by closing the workbook without saving changes, and then reopening the workbook.

MORE INFORMATION

If you are experiencing this problem with Visio 4 Drawing objects, you may want to check if a newer version of Visio is available. For more information please see the following World Wide Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/visio/

For more information about using Visio 4 Drawing objects in Microsoft Excel 97, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

168949 XL97: Visio 4 Drawing Object May Not Be Displayed Correctly