Tip #4478 - Diagram It
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Diagram
It
Do you have MS
Office XP or newer? Do you have some information you need to deliver
to an audience with some punch? Is it something that would be best
if displayed visually, as opposed to a bunch of text?
Maybe something
along the lines of a Venn diagram. Or, a pyramid. Maybe even a radial
diagram.
(Note:
You'd obviously use versions that are a little larger than
my screenshot. I shrunk them down, just to give you a quick idea of
what's possible).
If you're in need
of a display and you find you're looking for new ways to get your
point across, maybe the diagram choices available in Word, Excel and
PowerPoint are just the solution you need!
Here's the scoop
on quick, easy and eye-catching diagrams in your Office files.
To activate the
diagram function in older Office versions, use the Insert
menu, Diagram choice. In Office 2007, you need the
Insert ribbon, SmartArt button.
In older Office
versions, you will get a small dialogue window (the Diagram Gallery),
where you can decide what type of diagram you want to work with.
In Office 2007,
you'll find yourself at the "Choose a SmartArt Graphic"
dialogue window.
Select
a diagram type and click OK.
Instantly, a blank
diagram of the type you chose will appear in your file and the Diagram
toolbar will open. In Office 2007, you'll find that instead of a toolbar,
you get two ribbons with all of your options: Design and Format.
At this point,
you probably have noticed that the diagram has a whole lot of "click
to add text" positions.
This is where
you can get busy entering your information. Things such as font and
text size can be altered using the usual methods.
You can easily
add text positions, change diagram types, set text wrapping options,
change the coloring of the diagram and other items through the toolbar.
It's a pretty easy toolbar to use and I'm sure that, with a little
bit of experimenting, you'll have a handle on it.
For those of you
using older Office versions, there's one thing I feel I should point
out to you. When the diagram is placed into your file, it's fairly
large. I suppose that's good for easy insertion and editing of your
information, but I bet that once it's ready to go, you may want a
new size. Well, this is where I found the Layout
button on the Diagram toolbar to be very valuable.
I chose the Scale
Diagram choice to make big size changes, mostly shrinking
the diagram to fit within my document. Other size changes I tried
to make without the toolbar were very minimum and if you're embedding
the diagram into some text, you probably don't want it to be quite
that big.
At any rate, when
you're done, you can click outside the diagram to get back to the
rest of your file.
This is definitely
an easy way to give your information a powerful punch. Plus, you know
what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words!
~ April
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