Organizational Charts and Business Diagrams with Excel

April 07, 2005

The drawing toolbar offers some amazing business diagrams for use with Excel. To display the drawing toolbar, select View - Toolbars - Drawing.

Use this icon to insert a business diagram or org chart.

The diagram gallery offers six chart types. Skipping the Org Chart, the remaining five types are related. You can quickly convert between Cycle, Radial, Pyramid, Venn, and Target charts.

This is a cycle diagram. It can be used to show a process that follows certain steps.

Use the AutoFormat button on the Diagram toolbar to access a variety of color schemes. Other buttons on the toolbar allow you to insert steps, change the order, resequence a selected step, or change the layout. The final button on the toolbar allows you to convert between the 5 related types of diagrams.

The Autoformat button displays the Diagram Style Gallery, where you can select from 10 different color formats.

Here is a Radial chart with the "Primary Colors" style.

This is a pyramid chart with the "Fire" style.

This is a target chart with the 3D color style.

Here is a Venn diagram chart with the primary color style.

The final type of business diagram is an org chart. This type is unrelated to the other five.

The Organizational Chart toolbar offers a variety of options in addition to the autoformat button. This composite image shows the dropdowns available on the Org Chart Toolbar

The business diagrams offer a chance to create nice looking business charts for your use at work.