Saturday, April 25, 2009

How do I make an organisation chart or a flow chart in Pages?

One of the crucial things in making a chart is to have connector points between boxes and other objects, so the links can stay the same, even if you move the objects around.



The connector points of Pages are a little limited, but they exist.
  1. Create two or more shapes. (For example: Insert > Shape > Rectangle.)
  2. Make sure the shapes are floating in the Inspector > Wrap (third icon) > Floating (doesn't move with the text.
  3. Highlight two shapes.
  4. Go to Insert > Connection Line.
You can now move the objects around in Pages to fit the page layout. You can also drag the middle of the connector line to bend it. Or change line type, shadow, colour, and so on.


(Updated for Pages 9.0. Thanks for the comments pointing out that one no longer has to create the chart in Keynote!)

15 comments:

OpenMark said...

This works great, but you have to be sure that the object are specified as "floating" not "inline."

fruhulda said...

You can in Pages 09 use Bezigon tool to make the connection line! It is the last tool in the Shape menu/palette

Magnus Lewan said...

Rose, are you talking about the Bézier curves? If so, I do not think they work properly for making charts.

If you have one chart, which always will remain the same, and where you beforehand know the best layout, yes, it works.

However, as soon as you move the boxes around, there is no link between the curves and the boxes. This means that you will have to move the curves around as well, trying to remember which curve belonged to which box.

The advantage with the connector points in Word and Keynote and other tools is that the line and the box stay connected, even if you move the box around.

Spencer Russell said...

The instructions for making connections lines in keynote also work the same way within pages '09.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the comments.
I want to include a flowchart on my website, and would like the individual elements of the flowchart to be links. I'm using dreamweaver.
Does anyone know any mac friendly software that will do this?
I can make a flowchart pretty enough in keynote, but if anything changes, it'll be a mess to recreate the links in dreamweaver.

Anonymous said...

Why go via Keynote?

In Pages '09 just select 2 objects and:

Menu > Insert > Connection Line

Anonymous said...

Organization has a Z not an S. Thanks for the info

Anonymous said...

No def an s not a z the spelling with z is an Americanism and a corruption of the English word

Anonymous said...

hello, what about pages 08? I dont find the option for "connection line"..

flowers said...

How do you highlight the two shapes?

Anonymous said...

click on one shape, then hold down the command key and click on the next shape. That will select them both.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the blog entry. I suddenly needed a flowchart app for the mac and don't see many in the App store. I would love something that let's me sync between my Mac and iPad.

Anonymous said...

Use microsoft visio. It's the best software for this purpose :)

Rick said...

A great web based alternative flowchart for mac tool that I use is Lucidchart. It is integrated with google drive and has many great features such as real time collaboration.

Unknown said...

Thanks! I have also found how to make an org chart in word here and it was so helpful! Also, very easy to use!