How to make an org chart in Excel
Excel can give you an org chart two ways. SmartArt hands you boxes to type into, which is fine for a team of eight and a chore for a company of eighty. Or you keep the people as rows, one per person with a column for who they report to, and let something draw the chart from the rows. Both ways, honestly, below.
The template's twelve rows, drawn
The SmartArt way
Microsoft's own steps, which are the same in Excel, PowerPoint, Word and an Outlook message.
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Insert a SmartArt hierarchy
On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click SmartArt. In the Choose a SmartArt Graphic gallery, click Hierarchy, click an organization chart layout, such as Organization Chart, and then click OK.
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Type the names
Click in a box and type, or use the Text pane: click [Text] and type, one line per box. You can also paste text into the Text pane, and its indentation becomes the levels.
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Add boxes where they go
Click the box nearest to where the new one belongs, then Add Shape After or Add Shape Before for a peer, and Add Shape Below for a report. Add Assistant puts an assistant box beside the manager; it is only offered in the organization chart layouts.
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Style it, and stop
The Design tab under SmartArt Tools has colours and styles. Then the chart is a drawing in a workbook, which is exactly what you asked for, and the reason to read the next section.
Where SmartArt stops
Every box is typed by hand, and every box has one line going up. A person who works for two people is drawn twice or not at all. An open role is a box you label "TBD" and remember to update. An assistant is a special shape you add after the fact. And when the company changes, the chart doesn't: someone opens the file, finds the box, makes room, and fixes the lines, which after the third reorg is a job nobody has time for.
None of this is a flaw in SmartArt. It is a drawing tool, and it draws. The trouble is only that an org chart is not really a drawing; it is a list of people and who they report to, and the picture is a view of the list.
The add-in that used to do this, and is gone
For a few years Excel had a proper answer: the Visio Data Visualizer add-in, which drew an org chart from a table of employee IDs, names and manager IDs and refreshed it when the table changed. Microsoft retired it. Its own announcement gives the dates: removed from the add-in store on 8 December 2025, and switched off on 2 March 2026, after which diagrams made with it no longer load. The data in the tables stays.
If a tutorial tells you to use the Data Visualizer in Excel, it is older than March 2026. The wizard that survives lives in Visio, as a separate subscription.
The list way
Keep the people as rows in Excel, and let the chart be drawn from them. Four steps, and the first one is the one you have already done.
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One row per person
Name, title, department, and who they report to, written as the manager's name. That is the whole requirement. Your HR system exports this shape already; if you are starting from nothing, the Excel template has twelve rows to overwrite.
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Add what a drawing can't hold
A Dotted line column for the second manager. A Staff column, "yes" for an assistant. An Employment type column: employee, contractor, intern, or open. A row with a title and no name is an open role. All optional; every header the importer reads is listed, and the matching is loose enough that "Reports To" and "manager" are the same column.
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Import it
Open orgchart.live, start a chart, choose Import, and drop the workbook in. The first sheet is read. Managers are matched by name, including "Last, First", surnames on their own and typos, and every guess is listed for you before it is applied.
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Keep editing in Excel, or here
The chart lays itself out and redraws around every change: drag a card to a new manager, fold a department, add an open role. When the sheet changes, import it again. When you need a picture, export it: PNG is free, and PDF, SVG and an editable PowerPoint come with a pass or a plan.
Side by side
| SmartArt in Excel | From a list, here | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts from | Boxes you type into | A spreadsheet, one row per person |
| Adding a person | Add Shape After, Before or Below | Add a row, or drag a card |
| Someone with two managers | One line per box | A dotted line, from a column |
| Open roles | A box you label yourself | A row with no name, drawn as a vacancy |
| Assistants | Add Assistant | A staff column |
| When things change | Find the box, move the others | Change the row; the chart redraws |
| Getting it out | It is already in the workbook | PNG free; PDF, SVG and PowerPoint on a pass or plan |
| Cost | Part of Excel | Free to build at any size |
SmartArt facts from Microsoft's support pages and the Data Visualizer retirement notice, read on 5 September 2026. If Microsoft changes something, this page is wrong until it is updated.
Questions people ask
- Can Excel make an org chart automatically from a list of names?
- Not on its own any more. The Visio Data Visualizer add-in did exactly that inside Excel, and Microsoft retired it: removed from the add-in store on 8 December 2025 and switched off on 2 March 2026. Visio's Organization Chart Wizard still builds a chart from an Excel sheet, as a separate subscription. Or keep the list in Excel and import it here, which is free.
- How do I make an org chart in Excel with SmartArt?
- Insert tab, Illustrations group, SmartArt. In the gallery choose Hierarchy, then an organization chart layout such as Organization Chart, and click OK. Type into the boxes or into the Text pane, and use Add Shape After, Before or Below to grow it. Add Assistant is there too, and only in the organization chart layouts.
- Can I paste my list of people into SmartArt?
- Partly. Microsoft's instructions say you can copy text from elsewhere, click [Text] in the Text pane and paste it, and the indentation of the pasted lines becomes the hierarchy. What you cannot paste is a column of managers' names: SmartArt has no idea who reports to whom, so the indenting is yours to do by hand.
- How many people fit in a SmartArt org chart?
- As many as you can read once they've been shrunk to fit the sheet, which in practice is a small team. Past that, the boxes get too small to read and the chart wants a second drawing per department. A list-driven chart folds teams away instead, so a company of several hundred stays legible.
- Will the Excel template open in my version of Excel?
- It is a plain .xlsx with one sheet and no macros, so any Excel from 2007 on, Excel for Mac, Excel for the web, Numbers and LibreOffice open it. The CSV version opens anywhere at all.
Keep the list in Excel. Let the chart draw itself.
Start from the template or from your HR export, keep editing it in Excel, and import it whenever you want the chart. Building is free at any size; you pay only for a clean file out.