Smart Art re-sizing issue

Anonymous
2010-02-16T20:44:14+00:00

I often need to use hierarchies in presentations and documents (word or powerpoint). The smart art function seems like a dream for this sort of thing, however, it never works. Anything more than the simplest graphic is hopelessly mis-sized.  The problem is, as you add more layers, the boxes and the size shrink. When you attempt to change the size on one box (eg make it bigger), the other boxes change (become even smaller) relative to the first box. It is like some sort of cruel joke: the more you try to fix one box, the more jumbled the other boxes become. A hierarchy would be far more useful if you could adjust the sizes of individual boxes to show their relative importance or to emphasize a particular part.

There must be some way to lock the the size/position of part of the graphic or to adjust only specific parts without effecting the others. If not, then this "tool" strikes me as completely useless and I wonder if anyone anywhere in the world ever uses it? I have not been able to find any help any place else, so this is my last hope.

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Anonymous
2010-02-18T00:29:09+00:00

Yeah, I read that help article before I posted here. It does not answer the question.

Let me restate the problem. When you change the size of one box, the others change as well. I suppose that it is intended to be relative size change (as discussed in the help article), but it does not work with hierarchies of more than three levels or when resizing several boxes. I guess the algorithms which are meant to auto adjust the relative size where not constructed to handle anything more than the most simple graphic.

So, again, the question is: **is there a way to disable the auto re-sizing of shapes.**In other words, to prevent powerpoint (or word) from auto re-sizing boxes and only change the size of a single box.

This problem seems to be worse in powerpoint, but is easily demonstrated in word as well.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-07-12T13:16:36+00:00

    SmartArt is not suitable for typical office organisation charts.

    There is an Add-In called Organisation Chart Add-in for Office Programs. If you enable this through the Word options / PowerPoint options you can draw sophisticated organisation and hieracrchy diagrams.

    Its been around a while, and looks a little primitive but works like a charm!

    KK

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-09-13T15:15:56+00:00

    I may have found a work around for the very annoying re-sizing issue.

    Create the hierarchy to about the third level (The point I find that, when adding other boxes below, the auto sizing goes haywire)

    At this point select the outer master box that holds the (not so) Smart Art graphics. Copy with Ctrl+C and then paste onto another slide.

    Now when I've been adding boxes 'below' there tiny and I just have to make them larger and all the other boxes stay the size they are and also where they are and I can manually move them to where I want.

    Hope this works for you as well

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-02-23T23:04:08+00:00

    I find using Visio and exporting to JPG and importing back into PPT works. Yes, I know it is annoying but so much easier to maintain an XLS file that will create the hierarchy in Visio than spend hours on smart art

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-09-19T12:26:02+00:00

    hmm, think I got an easy solution. Insert a smart art, copy (Ctrl+C) one box, select the smart art "frame" and delete the whole thing. Afterwards paste (Ctrl+V) the box onto the empty slide maybe 2 or 3 times (as many as you need) and you can move and shuffle them around individually .. no resizing

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