
Ask HN: Flow chart tool for MS Office - outsideoflife
Does anyone know of a simple FOSS tool to produce flow charts that are suitable for embedding in Microsoft Word and Excel documents? MS word smart art always seems like a real faff. Being from a finance background I sometimes turn to excel, but that leaves you with manually having to align the arrows. What solutions have other people found. I don&#x27;t need strict UML&#x2F;BPM or anything (although that wouldn&#x27;t hurt to be in line with it), I am just trying to document short processes quickly and in a more professional looking way.
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dodgyb
[https://www.draw.io/](https://www.draw.io/) is a free online visio
replacement

[http://dia-installer.de/](http://dia-installer.de/) visio clone on
win/mac/linux

[http://staruml.io/](http://staruml.io/) UML modeller on win/mac/linux

[https://www.calligra.org/flow/](https://www.calligra.org/flow/) Linux KDE
flowcharting tool with win/mac installers

[http://thinkcomposer.com/](http://thinkcomposer.com/) Mindmaps, flowcharts
etc. on Win only

[https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools-
uml-...](https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools-uml-er-bpmn/)
reviews UML tools

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xhedley
Do work have PowerPoint? Insert Shape Flowchart works OK. You can add line
connectors and align shapes and so forth.

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outsideoflife
I do actually, that is a good call

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twobyfour
Visio?

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outsideoflife
Work wont buy me Visio or 365. Is it any good?

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twobyfour
No idea, never used it, but it seems like an obvious choice to use with
Office. An employer that won't buy you the software you need to do your job
seems ridiculous though.

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outsideoflife
It is totally normal at my company. 'Can't you just do it in Excel'. They have
shown an alarming tendency to be totally willing to waste my time.

