Hi, I've been looking around online for how to use data graphics but for some reason, nothing quite explains how I achieve what I want.  

I have an Excel spreadsheet.  My rows are the names of 20 machines.  And the columns are the C drive space used, C drive space total, D drive space used and D drive space total.  I want to have two hard drive icons: one displaying a progress bar of C drive usage and one displaying a progress bar of D drive usage.

Here is what I've tried.  

In Visio 2013, I imported the Excel Spreadsheet, dragged a hard drive icon (shape) into the workspace.  Then I right-clicked the shape, and selected Data > Edit Data Graphic.

The New Data Graphic window pops up so I tried to create a new item.  And here's where I get stymied.  I'm not sure what Data Field to select because the list of Categories aren't relevant...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: I discovered that when I drag a database icon and try to create a new data graphic, now I see a whole bunch of appropriate items under the Data Field dropdown.  Then, I tried dragging a server icon and now the "Hard Drive Capacity" data field is present.  Why aren't those fields present in other icons?  Now, I have the progress bar displayed but how do I select the data?  

• Edited by sam2046 Wednesday, September 11, 2013 4:26 PM

data graphics get their information from shape data (custom properties) in the shape sheet of the  object. This information (the field names) are either put their by the shape designer, or can be embedded when the shape is linked to a data recordset (the internal version of the excel data you have imported). If the field names do not match between the original shape and the excel data, then your stuck using the excel field names for your data graphic visualization. David Parker's book is a great place to get further information on what is happening.

al

you might check this out

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio-help/demo-let-data-tell-its-story-with-data-graphics-HA010182979.aspx