How to Create Flowcharts in Excel Series -
Grouping Flowchart Shapes
By Nicholas Hebb
Excel Flowchart Wizard
FlowBreeze - a flowcharting automation add-in for Excel that makes creating flowcharts simple and pain free. Download a Free 30-day Trial Today.
Group before Saving
Grouping handles the flowchart as a single drawing object, instead on many shapes.
After you've completed your flowchart and made sure all the shapes are uniformly sized and aligned, make sure to use the Group function. The Group function takes all the shapes that you have selected and creates a single shape out of them. The easiest way to group objects together is to select them all, then right click over the selection. On the context menu (popup menu), select the Grouping sub-menu then Group:
3 Reasons to Use Group
Alignment, usability, and protection
One, when you close an Microsoft Excel file with a flowchart drawing and re-open it, you'll sometimes find that all the flowchart symbols that you took such great care to line up aren't lined up anymore. The difference is usually slight and hardly noticeable - until you start to edit the flowchart again. Then you'll notice that the flow lines (connectors) between flowchart symbols aren't quite straight anymore. By Grouping before saving, you can just select the entire flowchart as a single item and realign it to the drawing grid in a single step.
Two, when you need to copy the flowchart to another file, such as a Microsoft Word document, working with a Group makes this much easier, since you only have to copy and paste the flowchart as a single item. Microsoft Word and PowerPoint support Group/Ungroup, so if you want to edit the flowchart later, you can still ungroup in the destination application and edit the individual flowchart symbols.
Three, grouping acts as a protection mechanism for the overall layout of your flowchart, so you don't accidentally drag an individual flowchart symbol out of alignment.
About the Author
Nicholas Hebb is the founder of BreezeTree Software, maker of FlowBreeze Flowchart Software.