Get a quick view of your company’s hierarchy with an org chart

by Kara Soos

Application:

Microsoft Excel 2000/2002/2003/2004/2007

Operating Systems:

Microsoft Windows, Macintosh

 

 

You may start to forget how helpful visual representation can be when you’ve been spending long hours with seemingly endless numbers. You don’t have to use boring lists or outlines to show hierarchical relationships in an Excel workbook — all you have to do is create a quick-and-easy organization chart.

 

To demonstrate how organization charts work, we’ll:

• Insert an organization chart in our worksheet.

• Format the organization chart in several ways to suit our needs.

• Manipulate the organization chart’s levels.

• Point out other uses for an organization chart in your Excel workbooks.

 

Unlike most Excel features, org charts deal with relationships between objects as opposed to calculations and data analysis. That doesn’t mean you should dismiss them. For example, the unintuitive numbered outline showing the organizational structure of a small accounting firm is easier to comprehend when it’s transformed into an org chart, as shown in Figure A. The org chart makes the spreadsheet visually compelling and user-friendly.

 

A:

Organization charts show the hierarchical relationships between two or more objects.

 

Insert an org chart in your worksheet

With a few simple steps, you can insert an org chart as an object in your worksheet.

 

Download: If you want to follow along with our example, you can download the file orgchart.xls from the URL given at the beginning of this article.

 

 

To insert an org chart:

1. Open the workbook in which you’d like to place the org chart.

2.  Choose Insert | Diagram (Insert | Picture | Organization Chart in Excel 2000/2004) from the menu bar.

3.  Select Organization Chart from the Diagram Gallery, as shown in Figure B.

4.  Click OK to create the org chart.

 

B:

Excel 2002/2003 offers several other kinds of diagrams, but the org chart is one of the most frequently used.

 

Once you create the org chart, three different objects appear on your screen:

•  The default organization chart.

•  The Organization Chart toolbar.

•  The Drawing toolbar (if it isn’t already displayed).

You can use these toolbars to customize your organization chart depending on your needs.

In Excel 2000/2004, the organization chart is embedded as an object. These versions also display the Microsoft Organization Chart dialog box, where you can add text, edit and manipulate the chart.

 

Add text to your org chart

By default, each AutoShape of your org chart contains the text string Click to add text. At any time, you can enter text for each of the org chart’s AutoShapes. You can also format the diagram completely before you enter the text, if you wish.

 

To add text to your org chart:

1. Click on the org chart AutoShape’s default text to modify it.

2.  Type your text when a crosshatched border and insertion point appear.

3.  Click outside of the org chart AutoShape when you finish typing.

4.  Repeat this process for any other org chart AutoShapes in which you’d like to change the text.

 

Apply an AutoFormat

The quickest and easiest way to make an org chart look great is to apply one of Excel’s AutoFormats. They’re available in Excel 2002/2003, but you can also format your org charts in earlier versions — just refer to the “Format your org chart manually” section of this article.

 

To apply an AutoFormat to your org chart:

1. Click on the org chart to select it. You’ll see a crossh