Visio Shapes pane is missing in Visio 2010

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.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Many thanks. MS Help is completely useless.
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  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.

• Anonymous
  January 12, 2012
  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

• Anonymous
  April 16, 2012
  Thanks a lot.....

• Anonymous
  May 03, 2012
  Thank you, was the first article I pulled to resolve this issue for a user and it worked! Good job.

• Anonymous
  June 21, 2012
  Thanks this helped.  Adding key words - "shapes window not showing up visio 2010" "visio 2010 how to open stencil"

• Anonymous
  July 17, 2012
  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.

• Anonymous
  August 14, 2012
  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.

• Anonymous
  December 06, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 04, 2013
  Great thank you, been trying to work out this all day.  Brilliant!

• Anonymous
  January 13, 2013
  Thank you very much for your help.

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2013
  thank you!  

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2013
  Worked exactly how you said. :-)) Thanks very much for sharing this information which is not on the Visio Help.

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2013
  Thank you !!

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2013
  thanks a lot.it was agreat help....:-)

• Anonymous
  May 07, 2013
  Thanks a lot !

• Anonymous
  June 27, 2013
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 08, 2013
  Thank you!!

• Anonymous
  October 22, 2013
  worked!. had upgraded from WinXP Visio 2007 to Win7 Visio 2010.

• Anonymous
  January 22, 2014
  thank you!!!! I agree...MS Help is pretty helpless

• Anonymous
  March 26, 2014
  THANKS!!! Couldn't find it anywhere or in help!

• Anonymous
  April 03, 2014
  THAAAAAAANNNKS !!!!!!

• Anonymous
  July 15, 2014
  Thanks for the Alt F1 tip - struggled for ages before I found this!

• Anonymous
  September 04, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 12, 2014
  It worked for me! :-) Thank you!

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2015
  Great........!!!!

• Anonymous
  February 02, 2015
  Phew! Thank you - saved me from several more hours of repeatedly rephrasing the problem in the hope the Help would help!

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2015
  When I click task panes and then shapes nothing happens.

• Anonymous
  February 25, 2015
  gr8 thank you keep up your good work

• Anonymous
  April 13, 2015
  Thank you so much!!!..i have tried every thing but wasn't able to identify the missing shapes option in the visio.
  
  

• Anonymous
  May 12, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 18, 2015
  super

• Anonymous
  August 28, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 16, 2015
  Thank you!

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2015
  Thank you! Very helpful