/ / This article gives an overview on how to create flowcharts in Excel. There are significant differences between the tools in the newer versions of Excel and the older versions. Make sure that you read the appropriate section below. Most of the editing techniques are the same and are covered in the Editing Excel Flowcharts section at the bottom of the article. Most of the topics 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. Setting Up The Environment Before actually creating the flowchart, we will cover some preliminaries that make flowcharting in Excel a bit easier. Creating a Grid (Optional) A grid is not required, but it makes creating flowcharts with uniform shape sizes easier, especially when coupled with the Snap to Grid feature, which we will cover in the next section. The grid is created by changing the column widths to match the standard row height. Assuming that you're using the default font of Calibri 11, the standard row height is 15 pts, which equals 20 pixels. To create the grid, change the column widths to 2.14 (= 20 pixels). (In case you're curious, the units for Excel column widths are based on the average number of characters that will fit within a cell.) Follow the steps as described below these images. Snap to Grid / Shape Enabling Snap When Snap to Grid is turned on, anytime you add, move, or resize a shape, the edges of the shape will “snap” to the nearest grid line. Snap to Shape provides the same behavior, except shapes are snapped to the edges of other shapes. You can turn on both Snap to Grid and Snap to Shape by clicking the Page Layout tab, then click the Align dropdown, as shown in the image on the right. Page Layout Beyond the obvious reasons, setting the page layout before creating the flowchart is important for several reasons: • If you plan to copy the flowchart from Excel to Word, or some other application, matching the margins to the target is important.
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April 2018
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