Excel Import to Visio .... lines and linked shape colors in excel

Started by Marion Ligon, September 25, 2015, 03:32:29 AM

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Marion Ligon

I have been tasked with re-building new org. charts in Visio. YAY ME!  ;) I want to say that our company is using the 2007 version, but I could be wrong. I am new to all of this, but I feel like I have a good handle on it. Here are my questions:

1.) I have Name, Title, and Reports to in my excel spreadsheet. The reports to has to be the actual persons name and not the title of the person they report to. For some reason I couldn't get that to work. That is not a big deal really, but is it possible for me to have "reports to" and "dotted line to" and Visio recognize that the person reports to multiple people and create a dotted line when it imports the file from excel?

2.) We have several plants in our company, so many people have the same title at different locations. If there are multiple titles that are the same Visio will kick them out and not import them. I think I fixed it though by using the mangers name instead of title. The same goes for when I have an "OPEN" position, it will the kick all but one OPEN position out. I can put OPEN-1 or OPEN-2, but then that creates a problem too. With employees in 2000 range it makes it difficult to remember where your open count left off. Is there some kind of excel format I should be following?

3.) In the charts we currently have each plant is a specific color. However, people at the corporate level oversee multiple people at other plants. Is there a way I can import a color from the excel spreadsheet so Visio will know to associate that color with the shape of the box in the org chart?






Yacine

Hi Marion,
Visio can certainly do what you want, but you probably want to stick with the built-in charting tool. It won't do these things.
A custom solution could, but requires you to invest some time and effort.
Yacine

aledlund

Marion,
Visio supplies a sample excel worksheet that shows how the format 'has' to be put together. Depending on what version you are using the vile can move around on a system.
The orgchart wizard is based on Names (not positions). The wizard was an early tool that was put together to demonstrate some of the flexibility of Visio and has had very little investment by MS since they bought the Visio corporation. Yacine is correct that a lot can be accomplished, but it is not a casual undertaking. There are third part add-ins that can be purchased, occasionally you will see them advertised on the home page.
Al Edlund