Shortcuts to Edit in Visio

First published on MSDN on Aug, 01 2006

There is a lot of cool functionality in Visio, and some may be more accessible than you think. Especially for those of you who are keyboard aficionados, keyboard shortcuts in Visio could save you time better spent in polishing your diagram.

Here are a few of our favorite shortcuts:

1) Getting around your diagram

• Zoom in (Ctrl + Shift + Left-click  or Ctrl + Mouse wheel up)
• Zoom out (Ctrl + Shift + Right-click or Ctrl + Mouse wheel down)
• Zoom to selection (Ctrl + Shift + Left mouse drag)
• Zoom to whole page (Ctrl + W)
• Pan (Ctrl + Shift + Right mouse drag), Pan right  (Shift + Mouse wheel up), Pan left (Shift + Mouse wheel down)

2) Select, add text, and connect your shapes, as easy as 1-2-3!

• Pointer tool (Ctrl + 1)
• Text tool (Ctrl + 2)
• Connector tool (Ctrl +3)  (Note that if the Connector tool is selected and a shape is selected, dropping a new shape adds it connected to the first one)

3) Layout and layering of shapes

• Bring to front (Ctrl + Shift + F)
• Send to back (Ctrl + Shift + B)
• Group (Ctrl + Shift + G)
• Ungroup (Ctrl +Shift + U)
• Align Shapes (F8)
• Align shape to original X or Y axis when moving shape (Shift + Mouse drag)
• Nudge shape (Shift + ←,↑,→,↓)

4) Duplicating selected shape

• Copy (Ctrl + C), then paste (Ctrl + V), or
• Ctrl + mouse drag selected shape to duplicate  (Tip: you can also hold Shift to align the duplicated shape to the original X or Y axis)

5) Switch page

• Previous Page (Ctrl +PageUp)
• Next Page (Ctrl + PageDown)

6) Full screen (F5)

7) Open Visual Basic Editor (Alt + F11)

As Mai-lan’s blog mentioned before, Dan Brown has a keyboard shortcut mouse pad available here .

Also, for a complete list of Visio shortcuts see here .