Flowcharts & diagrams are sometime helpful for illustrating things visually instead of presenting your thoughts by speech. If you want to emphasize things in a visual way on the web, the flowcharts and diagrams sounds pretty productive. You can create flowchart and diagrams in the Office suites or any graphic editing tool.
By MS Word 2007, you can create a well-formed and organized flowchart. Here I’ve instructed how to create an impressive flowchart in MS Word 2007.
How to Make Flowchart in MS Word 2007
Creating flowchart shape
- To make flowchart shape, open a new word document and head to the “Insert” ribbon and click on “Shapes” button under the illustration group.
- Under the “Shapes” menu you can see different types of shapes. Select any shape that you want and drag it in your page. Create all the shapes as per your need.
Making connecting arrow
Also notice that there are several types of arrow are available under the “Shapes” menu. Select a closeable arrow and connect all the shapes with connecting arrow. Add one or more arrows with the shapes to connect them properly according to your need.
Adding text
Right-click on the shape and select “Add Text” to add a text into it. The cursor appears and blinks to indicate that you can type any thing there. Write down your desired text(s) into the flowchart shape.
Adding color and 3-D effect in the flowchart shapes
MS Word have a wonderful feature that lets you to spice up your flowchart. You can add any color and 3-D effect in the flowchart.
- To add a color, click on “Format” ribbon and select a matched color from “Text Box Style” group.
- To add 3-D effect, click on the “3-D Effect” option and choose a suitable effect for your flowchart.
Microsoft Word 2007 has many per-designed formats which help you to give the flowchart a professional look. You can do it from the “Smartart” option.
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Click that option by flipping to the “Insert” ribbon. Choose a design and hit “OK” button.
Adding background color
Adding some background color with the flowchart will make it more appealing. To add a background color for your flowchart page, click on “Page Layout” option on the ribbon. Select “Page Color” under the “Page Background” group and choose a suitable background color for your flowchart.
That’s it! Here is an example of a flowchart drawn using MS Word 2007.
If you do not have the Microsoft Office suit in your system you can give Diagramly a try to create flowcharts and diagram. It is completely web-based tool, no installation is needed and after all it is free.
To get started, simply go to the website from the above link and start creating the flowcharts or diagrams. There is no hassle of registration before using it.
The available shapes are listed categorically at the left side of the window. Select any shape and drag it to the right side area. There are grid lines to fix the position of the elements. Don’t worry, the grid lines won’t appear in the final document.
You can change the colors, project shadow or customize the shapes using similar tools in the Microsoft Word. Beside the shapes, a variety of Clip Arts are available. You can see the Clip Arts from various group by expanding the items. Once you are done with adding your shapes and diagram, you can save your work as PNG, XML, SVG, JPG Format.
Now you are free to use the saved diagram anywhere you want – documents, presentations, websites or whatever may be.
I found Diagramly as a cool web application to build and customize a diagram or flowchart in a similar manner that we do in the Office suites.
How to Create Flowchart and Diagram in Google Docs
Google Docs is pretty handy to create or edit your documents. It also allows you to insert the drawing objects like flowcharts, callouts, banner etc. Even, you can add freehand scribbles. All you have to do is use the “Insert Drawing” option from the menu bar in Google Docs.
The shapes and symbols including the working procedure are too much similar to Microsoft Office. Not only the drawing articles but Google docs has the option to add WordArt.
To create a Flowchart and diagram in Google Docs, create a new document, spreadsheet or Presentation and click Insert > Drawing and then select the object you want to insert from the toolbar.
While the both applications are handy to create flowchart and diagram, I would prefer to use Google Docs as you can sync Office documents with Google Docs using the Google cloud connect plugin.
