How to Create an Org Chart in Visio from Excel

Manually dragging and connecting shapes to build an org chart in Visio can quickly turn into a time-consuming headache, especially for growing teams. Instead of drawing it from scratch, you can automatically generate a polished, professional chart directly from an Excel file you likely already have. This article will show you exactly how to prep your data and use Visio’s Organization Chart Wizard to do the heavy lifting for you.

Why Use Visio with Excel for Org Charts?

Connecting Visio to an Excel spreadsheet is the most efficient way to create and maintain an organizational chart. Manually creating an org chart means every new hire, promotion, or team change requires you to manually add boxes, redraw lines, and realign the entire structure. It's tedious, and it's easy to make mistakes.

By building your chart from an Excel file, you create a single source of truth. When your team structure changes, you simply update a few cells in your spreadsheet, refresh the Visio diagram, and your chart automatically reflects the new structure. This workflow offers three main advantages:

• Saves Time: The Organization Chart Wizard builds the entire chart for you in seconds, saving you hours of manual drawing.
• Ensures Accuracy: The chart is a direct reflection of your data, eliminating the human error that comes with dragging and dropping shapes manually.
• Easy to Update: Maintaining the chart is as simple as updating your Excel file. Refreshing the Visio diagram takes just a couple of clicks.

Step 1: Get Your Excel Data Ready

Before you even open Visio, the most important step is to structure your Excel file correctly. The Visio wizard needs a clean, predictable format to understand the reporting relationships within your team. Your spreadsheet must contain at least two essential columns: one for the employee's name and one for who they report to.

Required Columns

For the wizard to function, your Excel sheet needs columns that define the hierarchy. Here’s the critical information:

• Employee Name: A column containing the unique name of each person in the organization.
• Supervisor/Manager Name: A column specifying who each person reports to. The names listed in this column must also appear in the "Employee Name" column. The person at the top of the hierarchy (e.g., the CEO) should have a blank cell in this column.

Recommended Columns

To create a more detailed and useful chart, you can include additional information:

• Title: The employee's job title (e.g., Marketing Director, Sales Associate).
• Department: The team or department the employee belongs to.
• Employee ID: A unique identifier can be helpful, especially in large organizations, to avoid issues with employees who have the same name. If used as the manager identifier, it makes the data even more robust.

Example Excel Structure

Here is what your spreadsheet should look like. Notice how "Amelia Chen's" Reports To cell is blank, establishing her as the top of the hierarchy. All other names in the Reports To column can be found in the Name column.

Quick Data-Prepping Tips

• Be Consistent: Make sure spelling and formatting for names are identical. "Ben Carter" and "Benjamin Carter" will be treated as two different people.
• One Leader Per Rule: Each person can only have one direct manager listed.
• Keep Your Header Row Clean: Use clear, descriptive headers like "Name," "Title," and "Reports To." Avoid special characters.
• Start Fresh: Your data should start in cell A1 of the sheet. Remove any extra empty rows or columns before the main table.
• Save Your File: Once your data is clean, save the Excel file (.xlsx) in a location you can easily find.

Step 2: Use the Visio Organization Chart Wizard

With your Excel file ready and saved, it's time to open Visio and let the wizard work its magic.

1. Launch the Wizard Open the Visio desktop app. On the home screen, select "New" and search for the Organization Chart template. Click on it, then click "Create." This will open the Organization Chart Wizard automatically.
2. Choose Your Data Source In the first screen of the wizard, you'll be asked an important question about where your data is stored. Select the first option: "Information that's already stored in a file or database." Then click "Next."
3. Select Your File Type On the next screen, choose "A text, Org Plus (.txt), or Excel file." Click "Next."
4. Locate Your Excel File Click the "Browse" button and navigate to the location where you saved your prepared Excel file. Select it and click "Open." Once you've chosen your file, click "Next" to continue.
5. Map Your Columns (The Critical Part) This is where you tell Visio how to read your Excel file. The wizard will show you dropdown menus to map its required fields to your spreadsheet's column headers.
6. Select Fields to Display Now, you get to decide what information you want to appear in the boxes on your org chart. You can move any columns from your spreadsheet from the "Data Fields" list to the "Displayed Fields" list. For example, you might want to display the employee's name and their title.
7. Manage Optional Picture Files You can also include photos in your org chart shapes, but this requires an additional column in your Excel spreadsheet that contains the exact file path to each employee's picture (e.g., C:\Pictures\LiamSmith.jpg). If you don't have this, simply select "Don't include pictures in my organization chart" and click "Next." You can always add them manually later.
8. Organize Your Chart Layout The final step is to tell Visio how to lay everything out. You can specify a manager at the top of the first page or let the wizard handle it automatically. The easiest option is to select "I want the wizard to automatically break my organization chart across pages." This will prevent oversized charts from becoming messy and unreadable. Click "Finish."

Visio will now process your Excel data and automatically generate the entire org chart, with all the boxes, connections, and data correctly laid out across one or more pages.

Step 3: Customize and Polish Your Org Chart

The wizard creates a functional, accurate chart, but now it's time to refine the design to make it look professional and presentable.

Change the Layout

If you don't like the default top-down layout, Visio makes it easy to change. On the menu ribbon, go to the Org Chart tab. In the "Layout" section, you’ll find options like side-by-side, vertical, and horizontal arrangements. Select a team and experiment with different layouts until you find one that fits your organizational structure best.

Apply a Theme

For a quick professional touch, navigate to the Design tab. Here, you can browse a gallery of themes, which apply a coordinated set of colors, fonts, and effects to your entire chart with a single click. You can also customize gradients and colors further using the "Variants" options next to the themes.

Modify Shapes

On the "Org Chart" tab, the "Shapes" gallery lets you change the rectangular boxes to other styles, like dotted-line shapes for open positions or rounded corners for different departments.

• To change a specific shape, select it first, then click a new shape from the gallery.
• To move shapes, simply click and drag them to a new position. The connector lines will automatically adjust and follow the shape.

Step 4: Keep Your Org Chart Up to Date

Perhaps the best part of this method is how simple it is to maintain the chart. When new people join the team, get promoted, or leave, you don’t need to open Visio at all.

Just open your master Excel file and make the changes: add new rows for new hires, edit the "Reports To" column for promotions, or delete rows for departing employees. Save the spreadsheet when you're done.

Next time you open your Visio diagram, go to the Org Chart tab and click the Refresh Data button. Visio will re-read the Excel file and ask you to confirm the changes. Once you approve, the entire chart will update automatically to reflect your latest data.

Final Thoughts

By learning how to connect an Excel file to the Visio Organization Chart Wizard, you can transform a tedious manual task into a quick, automated process. This not only saves you a tremendous amount of time but ensures your chart is always an accurate representation of your company's structure, ready to be updated in just a few clicks.

Just as Visio helps you map organizational relationships, other tools can automate how you view business performance. At Graphed, we focus on helping teams make sense of their sales and marketing data from scattered platforms like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce. Using simple, natural language, you can create real-time dashboards to track your key metrics without ever touching a spreadsheet again. If you're tired of manually pulling reports, give Graphed a try and see how easy it is to get instant answers from your data.