Working with VB Namespaces

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.)

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. Word, for example, has different normal margins than Excel.
• If the flowchart direction is left to right, the page layout is typically in landscape orientation.
• When you display page breaks, they act as a visual boundary to check whether shapes fall within a page.

To set the layout, click the Page Layout tab and use the Margins, Orientation, and (paper) Size dropdowns to change the settings if needed.

Themes: Be careful changing the Theme on the Page Layout tab. It not only alters the font and color scheme, but it also changes the row heights and column widths, which will affect how many shapes fit on a page.

Creating the Flowchart

Inserting a Flowchart Shape

To add the first shape, starting by clicking the Insert tab, where you should see a Shapes dropdown button. Clicking the Shapes dropdown displays the gallery of shape types shown below.

You can add a shape to the worksheet either by double-clicking a shape in the gallery, or by single clicking a shape and drawing its outline on the worskheet while holding the left mouse button down. If you double-click to add the shape, the shape will be placed in a somewhat arbritrary location on the sheet and have a height of 0.67” and a width of 1.0”.

Adding More Flowchart Shapes

After you add the first shape, you'll notice that a Format tab (shown below) becomes available on the ribbon anytime that you click on a shape. We'll cover formatting in a bit, but in regard to adding shapes, the Format tab duplicates the Shapes gallery that we saw above. This makes it handy to add a shape then continue to add shapes in serial fashion.

Adding Text to a Shape

This is straightforward - just click on the shape and start typing. If you need to edit the text in the shape click in the center of the shape, and not on the edges. Clicking the text in the center will put you into edit mode, but clicking the shape's border will select the shape itself.

Adding Connector Arrows Between Shapes

Connector arrows are added to the worksheet the same way flowchart shapes are - via the Shapes gallery. After clicking the line type in the gallery, follow these steps to add it to the flow diagram:

1. Hover the mouse over the first shape and you will see the available connection points highlighted by red dots. Click the left mouse button down on the desired connection point.
2. While still holding the left mouse bbutton down, drag the line to the next shape, where again the connection points are highlight.
3. Release the left mouse button on a connection point, and the line will be selected with both end points highlighted by red dots. If an endpoint has a clear dot, it indicates that the connector wasn't connected.

Adding Labels and Callouts

There are two common ways to add notes to a flowchart.

• Text box labels: 
• Callouts: 

Text boxes are often used to label the connectors coming out of decisions. Callouts are commonly used to add side comments, with their shape indicating that they are not a process step. Both can be added via the Insert Shapes gallery.

Formatting the Flowchart

There are so many formatting options in Excel, that it's too much to cover in a single article. The sections below show how to do basic shape and line formatting. There is a special dialog worth mentioning. If you right-click on a shape and select Format Shape from the context menu, the format dialog will display and let you make changes to a wide

Formatting Shapes

When one or more shapes is selected, the Format tab displays the style gallery shown below. Note that the styles changed in Excel 2013. The shape styles are set by their theme number, so if you use one of the purple styles in Excel 2010, for example, and then open it in Excel 2013 or Excel 2016, it will display with the new orange theme.

If you are sharing the document with Excel 2003 users, note that the last row of styles will not render well in Excel 2003. If you are sharing the file with Excel 2000 users (i.e., the file is saved in .xls compatibility mode), the last two rows of styles will not render well.