Creating a Simple Flowchart in Microsoft Word.

By Professor Floyd Jay Winters (C) 2011/2017. Although there are certainly much better ways to create flowcharts, this is nevertheless a very helpful short tutorial for creating Microsoft Word Shapes and flow charts if you are want to use or must use Word. To keep this short, a couple of handy features were left out such as using a Drawing Canvas or Grouping.

It is recommended that you begin by first creating a Drawing Canvas to put a movable container around all these Shape objects, to keep them all together: Click Insert tab -- Shapes -- New Drawing Canvas (bottom of Shapes drop-down list). Once you create the drawing Canvas, you must click the Layout Options icon (see upper-right corner of Drawing Canvas) or Right-click the Canvas -- Choose More Layout Options -- Text Wrapping -- and choose an option such as Square or Tight. If you do not set a Text Wrapping or Wrap Text option, the Drawing Canvas will not play nice with you. After the Drawing Canvas is created, you can place all of your shapes inside and they can be easily moved and formatted.

Also, when you are done you can hold down the Ctrl key and click each desired object, so that multiple shapes are selected. Then Right-click and choose Group to keep a set of shapes together if you choose to move them. Also when you Right-click there are Format and Layout options.

Suggestion: Experiment first, by inserting a practice Drawing Canvas, then insert three or four Shapes, then Group a some of the shapes, then format the Drawing Canvas and some of shapes, so that you are comfortable before you build a real flowchart.