"Our Process" - Creating a process flow chart - Part 2

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About this lesson

We will create a cross-functional process flowchart using flowchart shapes. This includes, formatting shapes with shape effects, connecting shapes with lines and connectors, resizing objects and adding text.

Quick reference

Slide 7, Our Process - Creating a process flow chart with SmartArt and Tables - Part 2

In Part 2 of this lesson we will continue building a cross-functional flowchart. We will connect shapes together using line arrows and elbow connectors and ensure the flowchart is easy to interpret by applying color and effects. 

When to use

Use shapes in the flowchart category whenever you want to build a flowchart to show the steps in a process. 

Instructions

Connect Shapes with Line Arrows

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Shapes. 
  2. Select Line Arrow. 
  3. Hover over the terminator to see the connection points.
  4. Click on the bottom connector and drag down to the shape below. 
  5. From the Shape Format tab, in the Insert Shapes group, select Line Arrow from the Shapes Gallery. 
  6. Hover over the terminator to see the connection points and drag to the right to connect to the process box. 
  7. Repeat this process to connect all of the shapes. 

Connect Shapes with Elbow Connectors

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, select Shapes. 
  2. Select Connector: Elbow Arrow. 
  3. Connect the 'Cancel' decision box with the 'Start' terminator. 

Apply Color

Color helps readers interpret the flowchart. Keep color consistent. 

  1. Select all terminators in the flowchart. 
  2. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, select Shape Fill. 
  3. Select a purple color from the palette. 
  4. Select all process boxes in the flowchart. 
  5. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, select Shape Fill. 
  6. Select a blue color from the palette. 
  7. Select all decision boxes in the flowchart. 
  8. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, select Shape Fill. 
  9. Select a green color from the palette. 

Apply Effects

  1. Select all shapes in the flowchart. 
  2. From the Shape Format tab, in the Shape Styles group, select Shape Outline.
  3. Select No Outline. 
  4. Select Shape Effects. 
  5. Select Shadow. 
  6. From the Outer group, select Offset:Bottom Right. 

Add Text Boxes

Decision boxes require text. Readers need to know which branch to follow if the outcome of the decision is yes or no. 

  1. From the Insert tab, in the Text group, select Text box. 
  2. Draw a text box. 
  3. Add the text 'YES'. 
  4. From the Home tab, in the Font group, change the font size to 11pts and apply bold formatting. 
  5. Move the text box into the correct place for the 'yes' branch of the decision box. 
  6. Select the text box and press CTRL+D to duplicate. 
  7. Change the text to 'NO'. 
  8. Move the text box into the correct place for the 'no' branch of the decision box. 

Hints & tips

  • When using the Line Arrow, notice that is deactivates after a single-use. To keep drawing arrows, right-click on the Line Arrow and select Lock Drawing Mode. Press ESC to deactivate. 
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  • 00:03 Welcome back, everyone, it's time to continue this lesson in part two.
  • 00:08 So now I have my basic shapes in place, I can start connecting them up.
  • 00:12 Now there are a couple of different ways that you can do this.
  • 00:15 Now for most of these,
  • 00:17 I just want straight lines connecting all of these shapes.
  • 00:21 So for that, I can jump up to Insert and go back into Shapes and
  • 00:25 use just my basic line.
  • 00:27 Now I'm going to use the one with an arrow on the end, so let's click it.
  • 00:32 And what you'll notice is that when I hover over this first shape,
  • 00:35 can you see that I get those little connection points around the outside?
  • 00:39 So this makes it a lot easier for me to connect two shapes together.
  • 00:44 All I need to do is click on this bottom connector, drag down, and
  • 00:49 it's going to connect to the connection points on the shape below.
  • 00:53 Let's do another one, I'm going to select this one.
  • 00:56 This time I'm going to go to my Shape Format tab because you can see I have
  • 00:59 access to my shapes over here.
  • 01:01 So let's select the line arrow, click, and drag across, and connect.
  • 01:09 Let's do it again.
  • 01:12 And I can carry on going.
  • 01:14 Now one thing you're probably noticing here is that as soon as I use this arrow
  • 01:18 once, the arrow tool deactivates which means I have to keep going back and
  • 01:23 selecting my arrow.
  • 01:24 Now this works similar to the Format Painter in a way in that you can
  • 01:29 right click on the arrow shape and say lock drawing mode.
  • 01:33 And that will enable you just to carry on using this tool without having it
  • 01:37 deactivate each time.
  • 01:47 And there we go, I've connected up all of my shapes.
  • 01:50 And once you're done, if you press your Escape key and
  • 01:52 that will take you back to your regular cursor.
  • 01:55 Now for this final one here I'm going to use a different type of a line, and
  • 01:59 that is called a connector.
  • 02:01 So this time let's jump up to Insert, go into Shapes, and in the Lines Group I'm
  • 02:06 going to choose this one just here, which is an elbow arrow connector.
  • 02:11 Let's select, hover over, and this time I want to go out and
  • 02:15 kind of round, and this can be a little bit fiddly.
  • 02:19 But if you jiggle around with it a little bit,
  • 02:21 then you should be able to get it looking exactly as you want it to look.
  • 02:24 So now there's only a couple of other little things that I need to do to finish
  • 02:28 off this flow chart.
  • 02:29 Now the first thing I'm going to deal with here is color.
  • 02:33 At the moment it's very grey, it's very boring.
  • 02:35 I'm not really getting a good visual sense as to what's what on this particular
  • 02:39 flow chart.
  • 02:40 Now I'm going to select these terminator shapes just by holding down Shift and
  • 02:45 selecting them all.
  • 02:47 I'm going to go up to Shape Format and Shape Fill,
  • 02:50 and I'm going to fill these ones in with a purple fill color.
  • 02:54 The process boxes, I'm going to select all of these.
  • 03:01 And I'm going to fill those in with a completely different color.
  • 03:03 So let's do a blue.
  • 03:05 And then finally we have the decision boxes, and
  • 03:09 let's fill those in with a green.
  • 03:11 Now another thing I'm I'm not particularly liking on here is this shape outline.
  • 03:15 So I'm going to select all of my shapes,
  • 03:17 and remember you could use the Selection pane to do this.
  • 03:20 And I'm going to say that I don't want any outline, but
  • 03:25 I do want a shadow shape effect.
  • 03:28 And there we go, that looks a lot better.
  • 03:30 The last little thing I would do here would be to add in some yes or
  • 03:34 no labels after these decision boxes.
  • 03:37 So this is just a case of inserting a couple of text boxes.
  • 03:45 And then applying some formatting.
  • 03:47 So let's make this a lot smaller than it currently is, and let's also make it bold.
  • 03:52 And then I can move that into place.
  • 03:56 So I'm going to put that one just there.
  • 03:58 Let's duplicate so we get another one.
  • 04:01 Double click and change this to no, and
  • 04:04 then I can move that to the other side of this decision box.
  • 04:09 So here we've seen how we can insert tables into our PowerPoint slides,
  • 04:14 and how we can use them to house things like process flow charts.
  • 04:18 We've created this flowchart using flowchart shapes, lines, and
  • 04:23 connectors to end up with something that looks really effective.

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