Flowchart Symbols

It would be really nice if everyone agreed on what different flowchart symbols meant. But they don't. Sure, they agree on the basic handful of symbols (decision, action, start/stop etc) but some of the lesser-used symbols tend to be treated differently.

Here is an encyclopaedia of the basic and advanced flowchart symbols.

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

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.