how to create a flow chart in excel

8/6/2019 How to Create a Flow Chart in Excel

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FLOWCHARTING IN EXCEL SERIES -

How to Create a Flow Chart in Excel

By Nicholas Hebb
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Do you flowchart in Excel?

Try a risk-free 30-day trial of FlowBreeze, a flowcharting automation add-in for Excel that

makes creating flowcharts simple and pain free.

This article gives an overview on how to create flowcharts in Excel. It applies primarily to Excel

2003 and previous versions. Excel 2007 has a different user interface and more formatting

features. Flowcharting with Excel 2007 will be covered in a future article. Also, most of the

techniques described here can also be applied to creating flowcharts in Word or PowerPoint,

but in my humble opinion, of all the Office Drawing tools, the Excel drawing tools are the most

user friendly.

1) ENABLE THE DRAWING TOOLBAR

The first step to drawing flowcharts in Excel is to make the Drawing toolbar visible. This can

be done by selecting View > Toolbars > Drawing from the main menu or by clicking the

Drawing toolbar icon on the main Excel toolbar:

2) CREATE A FLOW CHART GRID (OPTIONAL)

This step is optional, but it makes for a nicer flowcharting environment. To create a flow chart

grid in Excel, select all the cells by clicking on the corner of the spreadsheet, as shown in the

picture below-left. Then, right click on one of the columns and select Column Width. As shown

in the picture below-right, enter 1.71 for the column width (which equals 17 pixels). The

standard row height is 12.75 points, which also equals 17 pixels on most systems, so you get

a nice tight square grid.

Excel 2007 Update: For Excel 2007, the standard row height is 2.14, so you will need to set

the column width to 2.14 as well.

In general, the standard height is dependent on the default font. The default font in Excel

2003 and previous is Arial 10, but it has been changed to Calibri 11 in Excel 2007.


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3) ENABLE THE EXCEL SNAP TO GRID FEATURE (RECOMMENDED)

This isn't required, but turning on the snap to grid function makes flowcharting in Excel so

much easier I can't imagine creating flow charts without it. This feature makes the shapes

align to the Excel worksheet cells when you add them, re-size them, or move them. It's great

for ensuring your flowchart symbols are uniformly sized and aligned.

To turn snap to grid on, simply click the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar. Then, click

Snap then To Grid, as shown below.

4) SET THE PAGE SIZE AND BOUNDARIES

It's always good to know your limits, and making flow charts is no exception. You need to set

the page size and then do a print preview because this will display the page breaks.

To setup the page properties, click File > Page Setup... from the main menu. Set properties

such as portrait or landscape, paper size, and margins and close the form. One consideration

you should make when setting the properties is where the flow chart will be published. For

example, if you copy and paste the flow chart into Word, then it's good to remember that


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Word's default lateral page margins are 1" less than Excel's (i.e., 1/2" on both the left and

right sides).

After the page properties are set, click the Print Preview button on the main toolbar.

Alternately, you can click File > Print Preview from the menu. Close the preview screen and

the page breaks should now be visible. If there is nothing on the worksheet yet to preview,

Excel will pop open an error message. If it does, just click OK - the page breaks should now be

visible anyway.

5) CREATE THE FLOW CHART SWIM LANES AND TITLE BLOCK (OPTIONAL)

If you're creating a Deployment Flow Chart, an Opportunity Flow Chart, a Process Relationship

Flow Chart, or any other type of flow chart that requires swim lanes or swimming pools, then

it's a good idea to create the structure of the flow chart before adding the flow chart symbols.

A full explanation of each of these specialized types of flow charts deserves an article of its

own. But quickly, you can create the flow chart column and row headers in two ways. The first

way is to use Excel's cell merging and borders. This is the easiest way if you plan on

publishing the flow chart in Excel.

The second way is to create the headings with Process flow chart symbols and create the swim

lane dividers with autoshape lines. The advantage to this method is that the swim lane

heading shapes and dividing lines can be selected along with the flow chart symbols, so you

can easily copy and paste the whole diagram if you're going to publish the flow chart in Word

or some other Office application.

In the flow chart swim lane examples below, the swim lanes on the left were created using cell

borders and the swim lanes on the right were created using process flow chart symbols and

autoshape lines. As you can see, the appearance is identical.

Also, if you plan to add a title block, including the process name, author(s), and revision info,

then doing so before creating the flow chart is a good idea.


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6) ADD A FLOW CHART SYMBOL

To add a flow chart symbol to the worksheet, you need to click the AutoShapes button on the

Drawing toolbar, then click Flowchart, then select the shape you want to add, as shown in

the picture below:

The mouse cursor will change to a crosshair. Left click on the worksheet location where you

want the top left corner of the flow chart symbol to be and drag the mouse until the flow chart

symbol is the size you want. See the flow chart terminator symbol below for an example.

7) ADDING TEXT TO A SYMBOL

To add text to an Excel flow chart symbol, simply click on the symbol and start typing. Note: If

you've created Word flow charts before, this is one of the differences between creating flow

charts in Excel and flow charts in Word. In Word, you have to right-click on the shape and

select Add Text from the context menu.

Tip: If you want to force line breaks at certain points in the text, hold the ALT key down when

pushing the ENTER key.

The text inside the shape can be formatted using the standard formatting toolbar buttons. You

can select the text and edit it by clicking inside the shape.

8) ADD A CONNECTOR (FLOW LINE) BETWEEN TWO SYMBOLS


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[Note: A Flow Line is an arrow showing the order of the process steps. In Excel, flow chart

lines are called Connectors. But Connector is also the name for a flow chart symbol used to

depict a labeled node indicating a jump to another part of the flow chart. I will typically use

the term "Flow Line" to avoid confusion, but in this section Flow Line and Connector are used

interchangeably.]

Connectors are named as such because the lines actually connect to the flow chart shapes.

When a shape is moved around, a Connector will remain attached to the shape, whereas a

standard Excel line or arrow will not be connected.

To add a flow line between two shapes, first select the Connector type you want to use, as

shown in the picture below. Tip: The Elbow Connector is versatile for flow lines because it will

look just like a straight connector when the shapes are aligned.

After you've clicked on a Connector type, the mouse will change to a crosshair. Click on the

edge of the first flow chart symbol and drag the mouse over to the edge of the second flow

chart symbol, then release the mouse button. A faint dashed line will show the path of the

flow line. When you hover the mouse over a flow chart symbol, the possible connection points

will show as blue dots. Also, the mouse cursor will change to a bomb site when you're near

one of the connection points (see the picture below).

When an Excel flow chart Connector is connected to a flow chart symbol, the ends of the

Connector are red dots. If one of the Connector ends is not connected it shows as a green dot.


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The figures below show a unconnected flow line on the left and a connected flow line on the

right. To connect a flow line like this, just click and drag the endpoint to the correct spot.

A yellow diamond (not shown) on a Connector is a line routing handle. You can click and drag

that to re-route the connector line without changing the position of the endpoints. It's a handy

feature, especially when a long flow line is routed behind other shapes.

9) ADDING CALLOUTS

Sometimes you need to add a note or explanation for a flow chart process step that doesn't fit

into the flow chart symbol. For these circumstances you can add a callout. Callouts are added

from the Excel Drawing toolbar in the same way that you add a flow chart symbol or flow

line.

10) MOVE A FLOW CHART SYMBOL

To move an Excel flow chart symbol, just click on the shape with your left mouse button and

drag it to its new location. Excel will show dashed lines to preview the new layout, as shown

below.

You can also move a flow chart symbol with the arrow keys. Normally, the arrow keys will

nudge the shape a small amount, but if the snap to grid feature is enabled, the arrow keys will

move the flow chart symbol one cell at a time. To nudge a shape when snap to grid is enabled,

hold the Control key down when you press the arrow key.

11) RESIZE A FLOW CHART SYMBOL


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First, Excel has an autosize feature available in the shape formatting dialog. Don't use it.

Excel's idea of flow chart shape autosizing is to resize the shape so that all the text fits on one

line.

Tip: You can move, resize, delete, or format multiple flow chart symbols at once. See this

article on selecting multiple flow chart shapes.

To resize a flow chart symbol, first select the symbol by clicking on it with your mouse. The

symbol will be highlighted and little circular handles will appear on the sides and corners, as

shown in the picture below-left. Click and hold one of the handles and drag it in the direction

that you want to resize the shape, as shown in the picture below-right. Excel will also display a

dotted outline of the new shape size (not shown in the picture). Release the mouse button

when the shape is the size you want.

12) ALIGNING AND DISTRIBUTING FLOW CHART SYMBOLS

After you move or resize flow chart shapes, the alignment may get thrown off. Plus, if you

resize a bunch of shapes to make them bigger, the spacing between the shapes may get

scrunched up. Excel has a tool that can be found under the Draw menu on the Drawing

toolbar to assist the Align or Distribute functions.

To use these functions, you must first select the shapes you want to align or distribute, then

simply select the one of alignment (left, center, right, top, middle, bottom) or distribution

(horizontally or vertically) functions to get the flow chart squared up. Alignment is self-

explanatory, but distribution will take a set of shapes and spread out the distance between

them uniformly.

13) DELETING FLOW CHART SYMBOLS

One of the least enjoyable things to do with a flow chart is maintain it. Here's a tip to make

that process a little easier. Lets say you start with a flow chart that looks like this:
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You want to delete Step 2, but that will leave a void, as shown below ...

... which means, you have to move the other shapes. You can select multiple shapes using

various methods and drag them to their new home. That works OK many times, but if the flow

chart is really big it can be a hassle to select them and move them all.

By default, Excel sets the flow chart autoshapes to move when cells are deleted, inserted, or

resized. We can use this to our advantage by deleting cells to move the shapes. Select a range

of cells as shown in the picture below. You must select a range of cell as wide or wider than

the shapes you want to move! Right-click on the cells and select Delete... from the context

menu.


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In the example, we want to move the shapes in this swim lane up, so we select Shift cells

up.

The result can be seen below. First there's the small issue of the flow line (Connector). It's not

connected. Step 3 was moved into position to be connected to Step 1, but the connection still

needs to be closed manually.

The second, and bigger, issue is the symbols in the Dept 3 swim lane. This method would have

worked fine if there were only one swim lane. But the flowchart symbols in the Dept. 3 swim

lane didn't get shifted. To remedy this we could have elected to delete the entire rows to haveeverything shift up. This option depends on the flow chart layout and what other shapes might

be effected by such a move.


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Another option would be to backtrack and select the cells from both the Dept 2 and Dept 3

swim lanes, as shown below. Then do a Delete... and Shift cells up as we did before.

Much better. Now all you need to do is close the connection between Step1 and Step3.


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14) INSERTING FLOW CHART SYMBOLS

Inserting new flow chart symbols is essentially the same process as deleting a flow chart

symbols - just in reverse. As with a Delete operation, we select the range of cells to perform

the insert on. Again, the range is selected so that the cell shifting effects the other flow chart

symbols in the desired way.

A space has been opened up to place the new flow chart symbol:


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A here the new flow chart symbol has been added:

15) CHANGE A FLOW CHART SYMBOL TYPE

Sometimes you decide a different flow chart symbol is needed. It's a common practice to

make all shapes Process symbols (rectangles), but there's a lot of semantic information in

symbols that conveys added meaning at-a-glance when you use more specific symbol types.

To change a flow chart symbol type, first select the symbol. Then select the new shape from

the Change AutoShape menu as shown below.


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Here is the flow chart after the symbol change was made:

16) FORMATTING FLOW CHART SYMBOLS

Many of the formatting features are available on the Excel Formatting toolbar (e.g., bold,italic, horizontal text alignment), and many others are available on the Excel Drawing toolbar

(e.g., fill color, line color, line thickness, drop shadow).

Some of the formatting options are only available on the Format AutoShape dialog, such as

vertical text alignment. This form can be opened by double-clicking on the outside border of

the flow chart shape. Some of the more advanced formatting options are available in the Fill


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Effects sub-dialog, including gradient fills, textures, and adding pictures to flow chart

symbols. The Fill Effects dialog is opened by clicking on the Fill Color dropdown as shown in

the picture below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Hebb is the founder of BreezeTree Software, maker ofFlowBreeze Flowchart

Software.

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