Generate organization charts in excel – howto?

Posted on April 15th, 2008 in Charts and Graphs , Learn Excel , hacks , technology - 6 comments

Here is a ridiculously simple workaround for those of you trying to generate an organization chart in excel:

Use google org. chart widget instead :)

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Open a new google docs spreadsheet (or work on the example organization chart spreadsheet I have created) and enter your organization employee data in the format shown below: (enter employee name in column 1 and manager name in column 2)

Create a organization chart gadget (menu > gadget > organization chart “add to sheet”), once done, the org chart should look something like this:

Its very easy to do and saves you a lot of time. If you need some example you can access the organization chart spreadsheet I have created.

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Comments
Rick January 1, 2009

Hello, thanks for the org chart tip. The Google Gadget does EXACTLY what I want to do in creating an org chart (use datasheet). However, I need to be able to transfer the completed chart to MSPowerpoint. When I attempt to Copy/Paste, the formatting doesn’t make the trip. Can you provide suggestion on how to sucessfully interface between the Google org chart gadget and MSPowerpoint?

Thanks!

Rick

Chandoo January 2, 2009

@Rick. Since GDocs is a web based software and ppt is desktop, formatting inconsistencies are bound to happen. There are however few ways to avoid this:

1. Publish your gadget as an image and use this image in your ppt. (just explore the publishing options)

Or

2. Take a screen capture of your org. chart and crop the area. This is simple and fast. Since things like org. charts dont change so fast (hopefully) you can get away with this solution.

Let me know if you need further help. I can send out a SOS call to other readers.

tony February 6, 2009

Nice, very nice.
Is there anyway I can save my org chart to an excel workbook on my pc?

Chandoo February 7, 2009

@Tony, Welcome to PHD and thanks for your comments.

One simple way to save the org chart is exporting your chart gadget in google docs as an image and then inserting that in excel. This is simple and whenever you change the data in gdocs, the image will be updated. So you just need to refresh the image in excel.

Since org. charts dont change often (hopefully) you can make do with this solution.

Tracy June 24, 2009

How would you ad an admin or add a name that’s a 1/2 step below someone, not quite in line with the others?

Chandoo June 25, 2009

@Tracy.. unfortunately, I dont think google provides a way to do this. (may be I am wrong). But you can use Office SmartArt feature to create org charts where this is possible. I think using smartart organization charts is better because they can be formatted etc.

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