PowerPoint is a powerful application that can be used for almost any type of presentation. A great use case for PowerPoint is presenting processes and solutions with flowcharts and diagrams. Pretty much every version of Office has the ability to add standard flowchart shapes like process, solution, data, and so on, but Office 2007 and later also has a new feature called SmartArt, which are templates for visualizing ideas , processes and threads.
The good thing about SmartArt is that you can use it in combination with flowchart objects and they fit seamlessly into it. For example, here’s a quick flowchart I created in PowerPoint that took about 5 minutes.
To start creating your flowchart, you need to click the Insert tab and then click Shapes. At the bottom, you will see the “Block Diagram” section.
If you hover over any of the shapes, it will also give you a short description, which is handy if you’ve forgotten which shape is a concept. Click the shape you want to use and then click anywhere on the slide to create an object, or click and drag to create a custom sized object.
To enter text into a flowchart object, you must right-click on it and select Edit Text. By default, Office uses blue backgrounds and white text for all of these objects. If you want to change this, you can either right-click the object and then select a style, fill, or path as shown above, or you can do the same from the ribbon bar under Formatting Tools.
Just hover your mouse over the different styles, fills, and effects to see how they look dynamically without actually changing the object’s current styles. Note that if you are inserting an object and later want to change the shape to something else, you can click the Change Shape button that you see in the upper left corner of the screenshot.
Once you have a pair of objects on a slide, you can connect them using the connectors in the Lines section. The connecting lines are six lines in the middle highlighted in yellow. Click one, then click one object and drag your mouse pointer over another object to connect them.
You can also right-click any object or connector and select Format Shape to adjust width, colors, styles, effects, and more.
Now you can spend a lot of time making your flowchart look pretty with all of these formatting options, but an easier way is to find the right SmartArt. SmartArt is made up of attractive templates that you can simply insert into your presentation. Click the Insert tab and then click SmartArt to get started.
A dialog box appears with a list of categories on the left, small thumbnails for all items in the category, and a description of each item on the right. To show you how quickly you can add beautiful graphics to your slide, click List, scroll down, click Trapezium List, and then click OK.
Now that the object is selected on the slide, click the Design button under SmartArt Tools at the very top of PowerPoint. Here you have to click on the very last style on the right called Brick Scene.
You will also see a Change Colors button to the left of SmartArt Styles, which will allow you to choose several different color combinations instead of having the whole picture in one color.
Go ahead and select the 4th from the left in the Color section and you now have amazing graphics to use in your presentation.
Now you don’t have to use this figure in your flowchart, but you can click Process and other categories that have a more flowchart-like graphic. Some elements allow images to be included, which is really good if you want to add visual appeal to your flowchart.
Overall, Office has many built-in tools to help you create great flowcharts quickly and easily. Microsoft also periodically releases additional SmartArt graphics that you can download for free. Enjoy!
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