How to Create Flowcharts in Excel Series -
Setting Up a Flowchart Drawing Grid
By Nicholas Hebb
Here's a couple of quick tips that make flowcharting in Excel a lot easier.
Most standalone flowchart programs and diagramming tools allow the user to display a grid and snap the flowchart symbols and other shapes to the grid. This makes it easier to position and size flowchart shapes uniformly. Microsoft Excel has this capability, too, but it's not immediately apparent.
Using the Snap to Grid Drawing Function
Snap your flowchart symbols to cell borders
Snap to Grid makes all flowchart symbols and other shapes align to the edge of a worksheet cell when you place then on the sheet, move them, or re-size them.
To use the Snap to Grid function, you should first make the
Excel Drawing toolbar visible. This can be done by clicking the Drawing
button
on the standard Excel toolbar or by clicking View > Toolbars >
Drawing on the main menu.
Once the Drawing toolbar is visible, you can access the Snap to Grid by clicking the Draw button on the Drawing toolbar. You will then see the popup menu shown below. Click on Snap, then To Grid from the sub-menu (not shown).
An easier way to access the Snap to Grid function is to add it to your toolbar. To do this, perform the following steps:
- Right-click on any toolbar, and you'll see the popup menu
show below. Click on Customize.
- The dialog below will be shown. From the Categories list,
select Drawing. Then, from the Commands list, scroll down and
select To Grid.
- Hold the left mouse button down and drag the Snap to Grid
button
onto
the Drawing toolbar and release the mouse. Now you have
convenient access to the function.
(If you'd like to create a special Flowchart toolbar with for quick access to flowchart functions like this, Click here to read more.)
Adjust Columns and Rows to Create Drawing Grid
set the height and width of cells to create squares
Once you have enabled the snap-to-grid function, you'll want a tighter grid for flowcharting. For most flowchart drawings, the default column width and row height will work just fine. But for more control over the layout of your flowchart, try setting the column width to 1.71. This will make the columns 17 pixels high - matching the standard row height (i.e., a standard row height of 12.75 = 17 pixels). [See the Excel Trivia below if you're confused about row height vs. column width units.]
If you don't know how to adjust the column width, follow these steps:
- Click on the top-left corner of the worksheet to select all
the cells:
- Right-click on any column and this popup menu will appear.
Click on Column Width ...
- Set the column width to 1.71, and click OK:
Now that you have the Snap to Grid function enabled and the worksheet cell size set to a nice, tight grid, you can easily create flowcharts with well-aligned layouts and uniform flowchart symbol sizes. Best of all, you can avoid those ugly jagged flow lines that result from unaligned flowchart shapes.
Excel Trivia
Q: Do you know what column-width units are? (hint:
It's not points, pixels, or any of the other
standard screen measurements.)
A: It's the average number of characters that will
fit in the cell when you use the standard font. So
the standard column width of 8.43 will hold about 8
characters in a cell.
Q: OK, so what are the row-height units then?
A: Points (pts), where 72pts = 1 inch.
Related Articles
Want more useful flowcharting tips? View the list of other flowchart, process map, and process improvement articles here.
About the Author
When he's not writing about flowcharts Nicholas Hebb runs BreezeTree Software, maker of FlowBreeze Flowchart Software - a program that cuts the time to create a flowchart dramatically compared to traditional flowcharting tools. What makes FlowBreeze different?
It converts your text into flowchart symbols based on the words you type, adds a connector from the last shape, and many other time saving features. And, because it's a Microsoft Excel graphics add-in, you will create flow charts that are highly portable and integrate directly with Microsoft Office for easy sharing and collaboration.
Click here to view the On-Line FlowBreeze Flowchart Software Demo and see for yourself. (It's a short, 30 second video that loads fast.) You'll be impressed.
