The problem with most flow chart tools is that when you need to collaborate with others, they need to have a copy of the software as well. If they don’t then they end up emailing you back with a description of the changes you need to make. You then edit the flow chart, hoping you got the details right. It often goes several rounds.

Recently I discovered FlowBreeze, a tool to make flow charts in Excel. Now you really don’t need a software product to create flow charts in Excel. Excel comes with a set of drawing tools that you can use yourself. The nice thing about FlowBreeze, though, is that it automates a lot of the flowcharting steps for you.

It’s billed as a “text-to-flowchart” tool because it generates the flow chart symbols when you enter each step description in a cell. It also helps enforce a uniform layout, does a few neat things with formatting, and adds the arrows for you.

The best thing, though, is that I can create a flow chart for the user walk through of a web app’s functionality, then email the Excel file to the customers. All they need is Excel to edit it and send it back to me. That alone saves me loads of time.

The FlowBreeze site (it’s made by BreezeTree Software) has a few good freebies as well. They have some free flow chart templates for Excel, including swim lane diagrams. They also have an interesting flow chart symbol style sheet that has a number of pre-formatted shapes on it, allowing you to quickly add attractive formatting to your Excel flow charts.

FlowBreeze is definitely worth checking out.