Massive org chart

[Fontaine]

I am creating an org chart for a company.  I have the organization data (whom reports to whom) in ms word. I exported to excel, and now i'm having to go through the spreadsheet line by line to remove white spaces etc to properly format.  Next, I've imported to visio.  The spreadsheet has three columns: 1) the level within the organization (e.g. 1, 2, 3 etc), 2) the name of the entity, and 3) whom that entity reports to.  The 2nd and 3rd column are required to get a proper org chart drawn in visio, and the 1st column is something my boss wanted.
I've tried the first 1,000 entities and it actually imports with no errors.  A few challenges I have and appreciate input on:

1) With only a third of the entities imported, the org chart is already too big for the canvas.  I've expanded to about 40 inches x 40 inches and it's still a tight fit.  My boss prefers to have all 3,000 (the whole organization) on one giant printout.  Is visio the best software for this?  Is there any other software that can import from excel and handle such a large volume of data?
2) What's the largest I can print for Visio?  I don't want to waste time formatting the other 2,000 elements in excel if I won't be able to print an enormous picture required.  Is there a place like Kinkos that can special print to blotter?
3) Any general suggestions for how to do this would be very appreciated.  It is very manual and labor intensive, and I'm not sure if that's because i'm not a visio/excel guru or not.  Seems no other good way to capture the org chart from ms word (it's all text, not tables).

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[Paul Herber]

Create your diagram, then enlarge your canvas manually by dragging the edges of the diagram with the mouse (with Control pressed on the keyboard).
When printing set "Size to fit drawing contents" in menu File -> Page Setup -> Page Size.

[wapperdude]

Some additional thoughts.
1.)  Go to File > Page Setup. 
      a.)  Printer Setup: 
                 > use scroll down menu to select custom paper.
                 > Print zoom:  Fit to 1 X 1
      b.)  Page Size:  select custom and enter the values.  Enter larger than you expect.
      c.)  Select the "Size to fit drawing contents" after the drawing is made.

2.)  I'm sure there's some page size limitation, but, practically, it's probably printer driven.

3.)  Is the Word doc setup with some kind of "regular" formatting, e.g., column widths, tabs?  Something that Excel can identify and use other than normal "space" between words?  Can it be easily re-formated so you don't have to re-type all of the entries.?

4.)  As to your "other" software questions:  I've not used any other, but google will direct you to them.  Whether or not they're more suitable or accept Excel inputs I cannot say.


HTH
Wapperdude

HTH
Wapperdude

[Fontaine]

Thanks guys, that helped.

[gsatterlee]

Hello,

I am trying to figure out if visio can automatically format a large org chart from data imported from excel in a hierarchy?  I have attached our current org chart that I built manually over many hours as well as a copy of the excel data i have.  is there any autoformat option that will show the hierarchy like i have it in my manually built chart?