Working with an Organization Chart

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In many organizations, reporting relationships change frequently—because of promotions, special projects, or changes in resource allocations. Visio helps you keep your chart up to date by making it easy to find, arrange, and update employee information. For example, when an employee is promoted, you can change the shape used to represent that employee in the organization chart. Table 10-1 summarizes the ways you can work with employee shapes in an organization chart.

Table 10-1. Finding and Updating Organization Chart Information

Task	Technique
Locate an employee	Choose Organization Chart, Find Person. Type the name of the person or any other text string, select the search options you want, and then click Find Next.
Change the type of shape used for an employee	Right-click the shape, and then choose Change Position Type. Select the new position type, and then click OK.
Change the order in which an employee is displayed under a manager	Select an employee shape, and then click one of the Move buttons on the Organization Chart toolbar.
Change a reporting relationship	Drag an employee shape onto the new manager's shape. Visio reconnects the affected shape.
Remove an employee and all custom property information stored with the employee shape	Select the employee shape, and then press Delete. If the same employee appears on more than one page (that is, you've created synchronized copies), delete the shape from each page.
Adjust a group's layout after a shape is moved or deleted	Select the top-level shape in the group, such as the manager. On the Organization Chart toolbar, click Horizontal Layout, Vertical Layout, or Side-By-Side Layout, and then click the style you want.
Adjust the spacing between selected shapes or all shapes	Choose Organization Chart, Change Spacing. Select the options you want, and then click OK.

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Troubleshooting

The automatic layout options have no effect on the organization chart.

In theory, you should never have to drag shapes to position them in an organization chart. You can adjust the layout with an automated option from the Organization Chart toolbar. When you add shapes to an organization chart, Visio doesn't move shapes on the page out of the way. If groups overlap, you can select a manager shape, and then choose a layout option from the toolbar to rearrange the manager and subordinate shapes. This behavior is different from Visio 2000, which always adjusted chart layout as you added shapes. To specify the Visio 2000 layout behavior, choose Organization Chart, Options. By default, the Do Not Automatically Move Shapes option is selected. Choose the Automatically Move Shapes Into Position, When Possible option button, and then click OK.

If you manually rearrange shapes, you can inadvertently break the automated layouts, so that the toolbar options and Organization Chart menu commands have no effect or work improperly. If you inherit an organization chart from someone else, and the automated layout options don't work, the last author might have inadvertently disabled the automated layout options by manually positioning shapes. When this happens, your only recourse is to adjust the spacing by dragging shapes into position.

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Note

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Your chart spacing might become uneven when you move shapes around. For a tidier chart, click the Auto-Arrange Shapes button on the Organization Chart toolbar.