Hi, this is my first post so please be patient!

I am trying to create several new shapes in MS Visio and assign them lots of different properties. Each shape will have properties associated with it like:
1. Document name
2. Document issue status
3. Date
but there may be multiple copies of any one particular shape each with different values assigned to it. Typically there are 100+ properties per shape!

I can happily create the shapes themselves and put them into my own shape template but the problem comes when I try to define the shape properties.



I can put in one property at a time via the 'shape data > define' route but that is laborious when I have in excess of 100 slightly different properties to enter for each shape.

Hence I have created a MS Excel sheet with the data (faster to create since can cut'n'paste and do search/replace etc.)

What I can't find is an easy way to get the data from the Excel sheet to the Visio shape data panel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuPzJ5g8Z0E - looked promising but doesn't quite do it. Other things I have found all seem to 'link' the data to the excel file which I don't want to do (since when the shapes are put onto the drawing the user will then modify data associated with each occurrence of the shape which would modify every occurrence of that shape). What I really want to do is use Excel to create the shape data table which I import into Visio and associate with the master shape properties.
Thanks