Flowcharts

Flow charts show the sequence of events involved in a process. They are good for documenting ("representing") processes, not how products look or what they contain.

There are standard shapes for different types of operation, such as actions, decisions, storage etc. Their size can tend to get out of control when representing complex operations, so the NS chart was created as a more compact and powerful alternative.

Drawing flowcharts in Word

Turn on the drawing toolbar (View > Toolbars > Drawing). Click on Autoshapes. Click on Flowchart and select a symbol.

To add text to a symbol, right-click on the symbol and choose Add Text.

To easily add connectors between symbols, click Autoshapes > Connectors. Choose the arrowed connector (the second one in the pop-up menu). As you move the mouse over the symbol to connect from, tiny blue squares appear show the joining points. Click on one of them. Then move your mouse to the symbol you want to connect to, select a blue dot and click. The arrow connector will appear.between the symbols and stay stuck there if you move the symbols later.

To move symbols around, click one and use the arrow keys to slide it around. Press CTRL+arrow to move it a pixel at a time. Draw a marquee (box) around a group of symbols, then use the arrow/CTRL+arrow keys to move them as a bunch.

COMMON FLOWCHART SYMBOLS

Terminator - Marks the beginning or ending of a flowchart

Process - A task that needs to be done

Decision - also known as an "IF" statement. e.g. Is the income over the tax limit? These symbols have YES and NO branches depending on the answer to the decision.

Input/output.

Here are some other symbols