How to make a flowchart in word

Microsoft Word provides many predefined SmartArt templates that you can use to make a flowchart, including visually appealing basic flowchart templates with pictures.

Of the standard Microsoft Office applications – Excel Word, PowerPoint – Excel is the most powerful and user friendly for creating flowcharts (disclosure: we make a flowchart automation add-in for Excel), but in some cases creating flowcharts in Word is handy.

This is an minor difference of convenience, but Excel makes formatting flowchart shapes easier than Word. When clicking it, the dialog box in Excel centralizes the flowchart shape formatting options in one place, whereas Word has half as many the formatting options in its dialog box.

You can also build your flowchart in excel using the shapes tool. To access Excel’s shape library, go to the insert tab and click “Shapes.” A gallery will appear with a variety of basic shapes including lines, arrows, and geometric shapes. Scroll down to find the flowchart section.

Word is great for simple flowcharts with few shapes as long as they all fit within the page constraints of Word. PowerPoint has similar slide constraints like Word’s page constraints, but for larger flowcharts, you can use PowerPoint’s hyperlinking options that let you spread the same flowchart over multiple slides.

A decision box is a diamond-shaped box in a flowchart containing a decision to be made. Each box has either Yes, No, or both near them to indicate the direction the user should follow on the flowchart.

Best Overall Lucidchart

For its wide range of functionality and integration options, Lucidchart is our best overall choice for flowchart software. The platform has hundreds of template options to choose from, including everything from flowcharts and mind maps to wireframes, org charts, and everything in between.

Powerpoint FlowChart Templates make it easy to visually illustrate process flow. These PowerPoint Flow Chart Templates provide a basic diagram which can be customized to represent an algorithm, process or workflow. These pre-designed ready to edit layouts are an excellent tool for managers in any vertical.

Automatic Flowchart Maker

In the first step, go to Insert->SmartArt and select a graphic for making your flow chart. There are various graphics that you can use for this purpose, however, the best SmartArt graphics include the ones in the Lists, Process, Cycle, Hierarchy and Relationship sections.

In MS PowerPoint, navigate to the slide where you want to add a flowchart. Click Insert > SmartArt to open a drop-down list with a variety of diagram types. Hover your mouse over “Process” to see the various flowchart options. To insert one of these diagrams, simply click it.