Simple and Easy Steps to Create a Diagram in Excel

What is an organizational chart? What does an organizational chart contain?

An organizational chart is a type of diagram that depicts the structure of an organization, company, or business. It is represented as a diagram with shapes and boxes that symbolize each individual. The horizontal lines represent hierarchy, while the vertical lines represent the relationship between superiors and subordinates.

The benefits of an organizational chart include:

• Communicating information about the company and organization.
• Human resource planning.
• Planning for each department and work group.
• Planning other resources to meet individual or departmental needs.
• Reviewing and changing management methods and processes.
• Restructuring the enterprise.
• Analyzing job responsibilities.

If you want to illustrate the hierarchical relationships within your company or organization, you can use the SmartArt tool in Excel to create the organizational chart of your choice. Let’s now learn how to create a chart in Excel!

How to create an organizational chart in Excel, simple and easy

In this method, I will use the SmartArt tool in Excel to create the chart because it offers a variety of chart types to choose from, saving time, being efficient, and more aesthetically pleasing. To use the SmartArt tool in Excel to create an organizational chart, follow these steps:

Step 1: First, open the Excel file, then click on the Insert tab in the “Illustration” section, choose SmartArt.

Step 2: In the dialog box that appears, click on Hierarchy and select the chart template you want, then click OK to insert the organizational chart into your Excel file.

Step 3: Enter the desired text into the “Type your text here” dialog box on the left.

Note: Please pay attention to the correct position of the text you want to enter. Any text with a dot to the left has a higher rank than the text with a dot to the right.

Step 4: After entering the content, you can click the arrow as shown in the image to “close the Enter your text here dialog box” on the left.

The resulting image will be as shown below:

However, if the created organizational chart is not satisfactory, you can choose a different chart type as follows:

First, click on the created organizational chart. Then, choose the Design tab and go to Layouts to find and select “Change the chart type you like”.

How to edit a chart in Excel

Create an organizational chart using images

In addition to the ability to enter text into the organizational chart, you can also choose chart types that contain images. To create an organizational chart using images, you only need to follow these steps:

Step 1: Once again, open the organizational chart selection dialog box, then select Hierarchy and choose the two chart types shown below to insert an organizational chart using images in Excel.

Step 2: To insert an image, click “Picture” in the left window. Then, the dialog box will appear, choose the insertion position, choose the desired image, and click “Insert” to insert the image chart into Excel.

As shown in the image below, you can see that the image has been inserted into the frame of the chart.

Add or delete content boxes in the chart

To add content boxes to the chart, follow these steps:

First, select the chart you want to add. Then, choose the Design tab, and click Add Shape to select the shape you want to add, or select one of the different Add Shape template options by clicking the drop-down arrow.

To delete content boxes in the chart, follow these steps:

First, click on the edge of the box you want to delete. Then, press the Delete key on the keyboard to delete the selected box.

Change the link between boxes with content

In this section, you can change the lines connecting the boxes with content. They can be changed to arrows, straight lines, or dashed lines with different colors. Follow these steps to do so:

First, click on the link you want to change, then right-click. In the popup shortcut menu, choose “Select the link style in the Style section” that you like.

Change the layout of the chart

In addition, you can also change the layout of the organizational chart according to your needs using the following steps:

First, click to select the field of content layout you want to change. Then, choose the Design tab and click Layout to “choose the chart layout options”.

In which:

• Standard: Centers all boxes below the selected box.
• Both: Centers the selected data box at the top. The boxes below are arranged horizontally, with two boxes per row.
• Left Hanging: The selected box is aligned to the right, and the boxes below the selected box are aligned to the left.
• Right Hanging: The selected box is aligned to the left, and the boxes below the selected box are aligned to the right.

Change the color of the chart

To change the color of the chart, follow these steps:

First, click on the created chart. Then, choose the Design tab, continue to “click on Change Color” and choose the desired color.

Note: This method only allows you to choose colors provided by Excel.

Change the color of each box with content

To manually change the color of a box in the chart, follow these steps:

Select the content box you want to color, then select “Tab Format”, click “Shape Fill”, and choose the color you want to change for the selected box.

Add an effect to the organizational chart

Adding effects to the organizational chart to make it more eye-catching and visually appealing is also important. Here are the steps to add effects to the organizational chart:

To add effects, “click on the inserted chart”, then choose the Design tab, go to SmartArt Styles, and then click on the icon and choose the type of effect you want.

How to delete an organizational chart in Excel

To delete the organizational chart you created in Excel, follow these steps:

First, click on the border of the entire inserted organizational chart, then simply “press the Delete key” on the keyboard to delete it.