If you don’t see any shapes window on the left of a new drawing after you upgrade to Visio 2010 go to the View tab, click on Task Panes, and click on Shapes
Shapes window missing above
You should now have the shapes pane. This is a toggle, on/off setting. If you click on the Shapes option again it turns the shapes pane off.
I’ve seen this with several customers upgrading from a previous version, like 2007, to 2010. I haven’t been able to recreate the issue on any of my systems with an upgrade from 2007 to 2010.
Many thanks. MS Help is completely useless.
For you folks who are still experiencing the problem, please try a couple of things.
First, try using the keyboard shortcut <Alt><F1>. (Hold the Alt key and then press the F1 key) This is a toggle of the visibility of the Shapes pane. There are 3 states: Off, Minimal, and Full.
If that still doesn't work, then a more draconian measure is to close Visio 2010, and use the Regedit app to remove the 'Application' registry settings for Visio.
1. Close Visio
2. Open Regedit (need to have Administrator permissions)
3. Go to the following location and delete the "Application" folder to clear the settings:
HKEY_Current_UserSoftwareMicrosoftOffice14.0Visio
(You may want to back these up first in case you choose to restore them)
Then test Visio, and if the Shapes pane is still not present, try the <Alt><F1> step again.
If this still doesn't help, a deeper removal of ALL of the Visio settings would be the next thing to try.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU… I have been messing with the applications for days. I have another issue, I have V2000 that will not print, I upgraded because I figure the OS does not handle the code. I can open Files(V2000) in 2010 but they do not print, even if I paste into ie WORD. Is there some bug that will not allow MS VISIO to apply older versions? I hate having to redo all the work I did in the older version..
thx
Thanks a lot…..
Thank you, was the first article I pulled to resolve this issue for a user and it worked! Good job.
Thanks this helped. Adding key words – "shapes window not showing up visio 2010" "visio 2010 how to open stencil"
yeah, I've clicked it on. I've clicked it off. I've looked for at least 2 hours for an answer as to why I cannot get the shapes pane to appear. I've reinstalled Visio 2010. I've downloaded the patch. and still,…. nothing. SO frustrated right now.
The same issue for me. Toggling on or off the shapes in the task panes doesn't do anything at all. My shapes are still missing. I was using this version of Visio for about a year and this happened out of the blue.
Long time Visio user. I have had 4 fellow developers look at it and they can't figure it out either. reinstall or repair does not fix it.
Very frustrating to pay hundreds of bucks for something that can't seem to work.
Thanks, I was freaking out there for a minute! lol
Great thank you, been trying to work out this all day. Brilliant!
Thank you very much for your help.
thank you!
Worked exactly how you said. :-)) Thanks very much for sharing this information which is not on the Visio Help.
Thank you !!
thanks a lot.it was agreat help….:-)
Thanks a lot !
Thank you. Now why couldn't the boneheads at MS cover this in the online help.
Thank you!!
worked!. had upgraded from WinXP Visio 2007 to Win7 Visio 2010.
thank you!!!! I agree…MS Help is pretty helpless
THANKS!!! Couldn’t find it anywhere or in help!
THAAAAAAANNNKS !!!!!!
Thanks for the Alt F1 tip – struggled for ages before I found this!
Thank you. That was exactly what I needed to find. I have now solved about 1.5% of my problems with Microsoft programs after wasting hours of my time searching online for answers to questions that the people who create and manufacture these programs should
be answering in a single location called Help or Index. Microsoft has really screwed the people who made them rich by deciding to stop telling us, their customers, how to use their products.
It worked for me! 🙂 Thank you!
Great……..!!!!
Phew! Thank you – saved me from several more hours of repeatedly rephrasing the problem in the hope the Help would help!
When I click task panes and then shapes nothing happens.
gr8 thank you keep up your good work
Thank you so much!!!..i have tried every thing but wasn’t able to identify the missing shapes option in the visio.
Thank you so much! I thought I was going crazy!
super
Thank you very much. That worked. To bad the worthless dumbass SOB’s at MIcrosoft could put some kind of warning or something about this ALT F1. These jerks deserve a very public flogging.
Thank you!
Thank you! Very helpful