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:
1 - Select All Cells 2 - Open Column Width Dialog
3 - Set Column Width
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”.
Insert Shapes Gallery
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.
Format Tab
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...
