Org charting?

October 10, 2005 6:45 AM

I need to make professional looking organizational charts. My office doesn't want to buy any software for me to do it. I'm willing to spend (some of) my own money, if necessary, to buy a tool that does it. I'd like to be able to either import the final chart to Word, or make .pdf's. Or both. Any recommendations for software?

Alternatively, is there a good way to do this with Microsoft Office that I'm missing?

posted by dpx.mfx to computers & internet (16 comments total)

have you looked into Visio?
posted by k8t at 6:48 AM on October 10, 2005

Yes, but I don't really want to spend that much; I'll just do it the hard way in Word to save myself $200. I guess I should have said in the question that I'd probably spend $100 max.
posted by dpx.mfx at 6:52 AM on October 10, 2005

FreeMind may do what you want.

There's a lovely application that comes on macs, but the name escapes me. Omnichart? Hope me please.
posted by odinsdream at 6:54 AM on October 10, 2005

There's a lovely application that comes on macs, but the name escapes me. Omnichart? Hope me please.


that'd be omnigraffle and it is perfect for what you describe. Not sure what the Windows equivilant would be.
posted by twistedonion at 6:59 AM on October 10, 2005

sorry...

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/
posted by twistedonion at 7:00 AM on October 10, 2005

You can do some decent org charts in PowerPoint.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:05 AM on October 10, 2005

You might be able to get by with the Windows port of dia, particularly if you don't intend to do anything particularly complicated (boxes and lines are pretty straightforward, and that's about all an org chart is, right?).

I've never used the Windows version of it, but I've run the Gnome version on Linux, and it works. I ended up using Visio to make complex diagrams for a digital logic/circuits class last year, though, because dia didn't include any useful shapes for that. It has the basics (squares, rectangles, circles, ovals, etc.) and there are some other flowchart-y things included that I've never used. It might be worth a look, if nothing else.
posted by Godbert at 7:11 AM on October 10, 2005

I do this in Powerpoint. It has the shape and arrow tools you need.
posted by smackfu at 7:21 AM on October 10, 2005

A quick search at ZDNet turned up OrgPlus Express which works with MS Office and is free.
posted by caddis at 7:36 AM on October 10, 2005

You could definitely do this with Inspiration. They have a 30 day free trial. I use it at work a lot when I can't use omnigraffle (b/c I'm on a PC).
posted by jdl at 8:08 AM on October 10, 2005

If you have access to a Mac, I second (or third) OmniGraffle. Make sure to add the slight drop shadows for extra slickness. On the other hand, if you've checked out the OmniGraffle gallery and aren't impressed or just have a PC, then you might as well stick with PowerPoint.
posted by kimota at 8:16 AM on October 10, 2005

Another vote for Powerpoint (if you want to stick to Office). It does the job pretty well, although it doesn't look amazingly pretty.
posted by greycap at 9:33 AM on October 10, 2005

You might want to take a look at Graphviz -- it's free and available for many platforms. There's a tutorial here that talks about org. charts briefly on page 2. A benefit of following this approach is that you can then do a little programming to parse a data file containing the organizational information and output the DOT language that describes the structure of the graph to Graphviz. Then, when hiring/firing/promotion/reorg. events occur you can automatically generate a new chart based on the new structure of the organization.
posted by harmfulray at 12:37 PM on October 10, 2005

This is probably a bit more than you need and a bit over your budget, but I usually see this sort of thing outsourced to One Page Thinking.
posted by gd779 at 5:00 PM on October 10, 2005

I tried the Windows port of Dia, and it sucked (printing was totally totally deranged).

But if you have Word, then the Autoshapes stuff built into its internal drawing package is essentially Visio, near as I can tell.
posted by flabdablet at 7:46 PM on October 10, 2005

I think any graphics program from the lowly MSPaint should be able to do it. Personally I use Photoshop for all of my graphic needs but if you want something similar in advanced workings, try Gimp - it's free!
posted by JJ86 at 1:34 AM on October 11, 2005