How to quickly make a good quality flowchart
October 8, 2010 9:00 AM   Subscribe

Any recommendations for flowchart software?

I'm looking for flowcharting software to develop a large business orientated flowchart. It must:

-Be windows compatible.

-Not require me to spend a disproportionate amount of time making the final chart look neat. (I have Word, Powerpoint and Excel and I seem to spend more time re-sizing arrows and text boxes.)

-Final output must be transferable to Word.

-Final chart would be editable in Word or Excel (ideally).

-I should be able to put hyperlinks in the text boxes.

-Also, web based would be a huge bonus.

-Easy to use.

Cheers.
posted by verisimilitude to Computers & Internet (7 answers total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Visio meets most of your requirements... though it's not web based.
posted by mrrisotto at 9:02 AM on October 8, 2010 [1 favorite]


2nd'ing visio.
posted by TheBones at 9:21 AM on October 8, 2010


Also recommending Visio. I use it for flow charts, data model diagrams, system/software topologies etc. Whenever I need to include these in a Word document, I can copy and paste easily.
posted by vilandra at 9:23 AM on October 8, 2010


There's a lot of overlap between mind-mapping software and flowchart software. Visio is pretty good for offline working, though I prefer mindjet mindmapper. Neither are cheap.

Gliffy is a free online service that's rather visio like (including flowcharts); mindmeister and bubbl.us are more of the classic mind-mapper bubble charts type, but can be used for flowcharting.

Importing into office in an editable format is going to be your real killer problem with the web-based/cheap solutions; pdf or png are generally your options, which you could embed into word. You can do it with visio or mindjet though, up to a point.
posted by ArkhanJG at 9:49 AM on October 8, 2010


I use Gliffy for a web-based alternative to Visio. Final output can be saved as PNG or JPG to be inserted into a Word doc.
posted by MagicEightBall at 9:51 AM on October 8, 2010


Dia is a free option, though it has its quirks.
posted by rhizome at 7:37 PM on October 8, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I'll look tomorrow and decide which best suits my purpose.
posted by verisimilitude at 3:02 PM on October 10, 2010


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