How to create a organizational chart, and how to make a organizational chart, from one list

Updated

You almost certainly already have the chart; it is just in the wrong shape. A staff spreadsheet with a manager column is an organizational chart written as rows, and turning it into boxes is a mechanical job once the rows are clean. This page is about the rows rather than the drawing: which five columns are needed, which four kinds of row break the chart every time, and what to do about the people whose reporting line is genuinely ambiguous. On the worked example a 140-person list carries 53 profiles with a gap and 478 empty fields, and most of those gaps are invisible until somebody tries to draw the chart.

The five columns that make a chart

Name, title, department, location and manager. The manager column holds another person's name or email exactly as it appears in the name column, because a chart is built by matching one to the other. Any spelling that does not match is a person whose box floats loose, and on a list of 140 there are usually five or six of them. Fix them in the list rather than in the drawing, or you will fix them again next quarter.

The four rows that break it

A person with no manager who is not the chief executive; two people who each list the other as their manager; a manager who left in March and is still named; and a contractor listed under an agency rather than a person. Each one either floats, loops or lands under a name that no longer exists. They are quick to find once you sort the list by manager, and they are the whole reason a first attempt at a chart looks wrong.

The people whose line is genuinely unclear

Some rows are not errors. A person shared between two departments, a project lead who directs work they do not review, a regional manager with a functional boss: those are dotted lines rather than missing data. Put the solid line in the manager column, record the second relationship separately, and the chart will show both. On the worked example 22% of a 140-person company has one, which is 43 lines a staff export never contains.

Questions people ask about create a organizational chart

Can I paste a spreadsheet straight in?

In the paid workspace, yes, with the five columns above; the chart is drawn from it. The free sheet on this page works from the numbers rather than the names, so nothing you type leaves your browser.

What if two people share a job?

Two rows, both reporting to the same manager, both with the same title. A job share is two people on the chart, because the directory's job is to help somebody reach the right one.

Should the list include leavers?

Not on the chart. Keep a leaving date on the record so the history of the chart still makes sense, and drop them out of the current view on the day they go.

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Related answers

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