How to Automatically Create Visio Shapes From Excel

By Tiesha Whatley

One of the powerful features of the programs in the Microsoft Office suite is their collaborative capability. Because of this, you can easily create something in one program and export it to another. One example of this is to use the spreadsheet program Excel to create shapes to be used in Visio. All you have to do is create your spreadsheet, enter in your data in Excel and then use the Organization Chart Wizard in Visio to automatically create the shapes based on the data in the Excel spreadsheet.

Step 1

Open Microsoft Excel. Start a new spreadsheet by clicking on "File," "New," "Blank Spreadsheet" and then "Create." Or, open an existing spreadsheet by clicking on "File" and then "Open."

Step 2

Navigate to the file folder that holds the spreadsheet you want to open. Click the spreadsheet file and then click on "Open."

Step 3

Set up your data, if you are creating a new spreadsheet. Type in the headers in the first row of the spreadsheet for each column. Enter in the necessary data in the preceding rows.

Step 4

Click "File" and then "Save" to save your spreadsheet.

Step 5

Open Microsoft Visio. Click on "File" and then "New." Click on the "Business" category and then click on "Organization Chart Wizard."

Step 6

Click the option to "Select data from an existing source" and then click on "Next." Click the option to export data from an Excel file and then click "Next." Click "Browse" and navigate to the folder that holds the Excel file you just saved.

Step 7

Click on the file and then click on "Next." Check to see if the wizard chose the correct row headers in the "Name" and "Reports To" fields and then click on "Next." Click "Next" again and then "Finish." Visio will be populated with shapes based on the data from your Excel file.

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