Microsoft Visio: define data position on master shape

Question

I am very very beginner at Visio and I have been struggling days on something which is probably very basic.

I have a set of data defined in an excel file, this way:

Name,Age,City

Paul,23,Paris

Jacques,55,London

Thomas,67,New York

I am trying to create a master composed of 3 rectangles, one for the field "Name", one for "Age" and one for "City". Each rectangle is supposed to contain one of the field in the above file.

Then I would like to create shapes of this master populated with data when I import data from my excel file.

Preferably I would like to avoid using VBA.

Is this realistic with Visio? Can someone provide with a good method to realize this?

Edit

Maybe my question might be simplified as this one: is there a way to link the data of one SHAPE to another SHAPE?

In other words, I create a shape A and associate data (name, age) to it. Then I create a shape B, and I would like B's data to always be equal to A's data, e.g if I change A.name, B.name also changes.

I've tried many different manipulations without success.

Answer 1

I eventually followed this solution. Basically:

• Group the shapes
• Set the data for the group (not for an individual shape)
• Open the "Open Group" editor (Right Click -> Group -> Open Group)
• Use the "Insert" feature on each shape, but instead of "Shape Data", a Custom Formula is needed.

The link above is very clear so I recommend it for people having the same issue.