Excel Drawing Toolbar and Select Objects

Drawing Toolbar in Excel 97-2003

In Excel 97-2003, Excel has a drawing toolbar that can be accessed from View-Toolbars-Drawing:



Once enabled, you can draw flowcharts and all kinds of diagrams:



The QI Macros provide several drawing templates for things like swimlane flowcharts:



Just click on any box to change the text or click on the shaded area to copy/paste the box, diamond or arrow. Click and drag the object to wherever it needs to be.

Select Objects in Excel 97-2003

The Excel 97-2003 drawing toolbar had a convenient arrow to select multiple objects at once:



Drawing Toolbar in Excel 2007-2010

In Excel 2007-2010, Microsoft moved the drawing objects to Insert-Shapes:



You can still use the QI Macros flowchart and value stream mapping templates with these tools.

Select Objects in Excel 2007-2010

The one thing that's really hard to find, however, is the arrow to select multiple objects. To find it, click on the Home tab, then Find & Select, and Select Objects:

This will allow you to select, copy and paste multiple objects at one time.

A customer recently called to delete some of the metrics on the QI Macros histogram, but couldn't figure out how to select multiple metrics at one time.Once you've turned on Select Objects, just click-and-drag to select and delete multiple drawing objects at one time:



I've noticed that some times you have to click on one of the metrics (e.g., Cpk) to help Excel figure out what you're doing.

Excel's drawing tools can automate many common diagramming needs without having to resort to Visio (which is hard to share with other people).