How to create a flowchart from Excel in Visio

A worked example, stage by stage

1. Descriptions and shape types

   Rows 1 and 2 — "Raise a travel request with dates and purpose" and "Estimate the total trip cost" — carry a description and a shape type and nothing else. This is Microsoft's starter workbook once the steps are typed in but before anything says what follows what, and at this point Visio would draw two orphaned boxes.

2. The next-step column draws the arrows

   Filling in the next-step number for each row is what produces connectors, and row 3, "Trip within the travel policy?", immediately forks to two different rows. A decision with only one exit is the commonest fault in a source table and it stays invisible until the connectors exist.

3. Label every branch

   The exits now say which case they carry: "In policy" and "Out of policy" off the policy check, and three labelled routes off "Finance approves the escalated cost?", one of which points back to row 2 to be re-costed at a lower fare. Visio calls these connector labels and expects them comma-separated in one cell, in the same order as the next-step IDs.

4. Functions and phases place the steps

   The last two columns turn the flat flowchart into a swimlane diagram: "Employee", "Line manager", "Travel desk" and "Finance" become the functions, and "Request" through "Expenses" the phases. In Visio this is the whole difference between the Basic Flowchart template, which ignores those columns, and the Cross-Functional Flowchart one, which uses them.

How it works

1. Check you are on Visio Plan 2, on Windows

   Microsoft states plainly that the Data Visualizer templates and the Create Diagram from Data wizard are available only with Visio Plan 2, whose list price at the time of writing is US$15 per user per month paid yearly and which is the only subscription tier that includes the desktop app. Plan 1 and the bundled Visio in Microsoft 365 cannot run this, there is no desktop app for macOS, and data-connected diagrams cannot be edited in Visio for the web. Establish this first.

2. Open the Data Visualizer template

   Open Visio, or select File > New if you are already editing a diagram. Select TEMPLATES, then Select Flowchart. Three Data Visualizer templates are listed: "Basic Flowchart - Data Visualizer", "Cross-Functional Flowchart - Data Visualizer" and "Audit Diagram - Data Visualizer". Choose the basic one for a plain flow; choose the cross-functional one if your table has owner and phase columns you want rendered as swimlanes.

3. Take Microsoft's starter workbook

   From the template preview, select "Excel data template" to get the starter workbook with the columns already named. Do not go hunting for the sample files Microsoft's older documentation links: aka.ms/visio-dv-bf and aka.ms/visio-dv-cff are both unmapped short links now and redirect to a search page, verified 30 July 2026. The workbook in the preview is the one to use.

4. Fill in the workbook as an Excel Table

   Each row is a step. Process Step ID must be unique and never blank; Process Step Description is the text that lands in the shape; Next Step ID names the following step; Connector Label carries branch text, comma-separated for branching shapes; Shape Type names the Visio shape. Format the range as an Excel Table rather than leaving it a custom range — Microsoft's guidance is to use a table if you want the diagram and data to stay synchronised — and keep formulas out of it entirely.

5. Run the Create Diagram from Data wizard

   Back in the preview, choose a unit of measurement and select Create, which launches the wizard. It has five pages: Excel, where you answer what diagram you want and select the workbook and the table or custom range; Functions/Phases, where the function or swimlane mapping is required and phase or timeline optional; Process Steps, where Process Step ID and description are mapped; Shape Types; and Connections, with its Delimiter and Connector Label settings. Then select Finish and Visio draws the diagram.

6. Keep the diagram and the workbook in step

   Click inside the diagram container to reveal the Data Tools Design tab. Refresh Diagram pulls Excel changes into the diagram, preserving formatting you applied to shapes inside the container and raising a "Refresh Diagram Conflict" dialog if a refresh would discard edits. Update Source Data pushes diagram changes back to the workbook, which must be saved and closed if it lives on a PC or file server, and offers Overwrite in an "Update Source Data Conflict" dialog. /guides/how-to-update-visio-flowchart-from-excel covers both directions.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Visio Data Visualizer add-in for Excel still available?

Treat it as gone and do not build on it. Microsoft announced its retirement on the Microsoft 365 Blog in November 2025 and set the service shutdown for 2 March 2026, a date it reaffirmed in December 2025 as unchanged. It has published nothing since confirming the shutdown ran or reversing it, and the two support articles still carry a future-tense banner. Because the add-in rendered diagrams through an online service, once that service stops, diagrams embedded in workbooks no longer load and refresh no longer works — though Microsoft says the data in the Excel tables remains intact. Microsoft's own recommended replacement is Visio Plan 2 and the desktop Data Visualizer route described above.

Which Visio licence do I need to create a flowchart from Excel?

Visio Plan 2. Microsoft's wording is unambiguous — "The ability to use the Data Visualizer templates is only available with Visio Plan 2" — and the same restriction is published for the Create Diagram from Data wizard. Plan 2 lists at US$15 per user per month paid yearly at the time of writing and is the only subscription tier that includes the Visio desktop app, installable on up to five PCs. Plan 1, at a US$5 list price on the same date, is web and Teams only. The bundled Visio in Microsoft 365 is a lightweight web app capped to basic diagram types and Microsoft says it is not a replacement for either plan. Whether the perpetual Standard or Professional 2024 licences include the templates is not something Microsoft's documentation settles.

What does the Excel table have to look like?

One row per step, formatted as an Excel Table. Microsoft's supplied template names the columns: Process Step ID, which must be unique and never blank; Process Step Description, the text added to each shape; Next Step ID, the ID of the next shape in the sequence; Connector Label, where branch text is separated by commas for branching shapes; Shape Type, the Visio shape to use; and the function and phase columns, which apply only to a cross-functional flowchart and are ignored by a basic one. /guides/how-to-turn-excel-data-into-visio-flowchart works through the column design, including how to handle a decision with three exits and what makes an ID stable.

Can I create a flowchart from a spreadsheet without Visio Plan 2?

Not in Excel itself. Excel's only diagramming primitives are SmartArt and drawn shapes, and Microsoft's instructions for both describe typing or pasting content by hand — nothing binds a SmartArt node to a cell, so moving a step means redrawing it. Microsoft's Copilot in Excel documentation lists charts and PivotTables as its visual output and does not mention flowcharts or process diagrams. If the Plan 2 licence or the Windows requirement is the blocker, QueryChart is a browser tool whose editor is the table: one row per box, a column holding the row number each step leads to, and lane columns for the owner and phase. Editing the rows is editing the diagram, on any operating system, with no add-in and no round trip to lose formulas in.