Inserting Process SmartArt Diagrams in PowerPoint – how do I insert them into my slides?

Inserting Process SmartArt Diagrams in PowerPoint – how do I insert this type of SmartArt into a slide in my presentation?

This week’s hint and tip is looking at inserting process SmartArt diagrams into a slide within the PowerPoint package. We cover this on our Basic PowerPoint training course but we also decided to do a hint and tip on it.  We are going to go through it now below.

Inserting a Process SmartArt Diagram

We will show you two ways in which you can insert a process SmartArt diagram into a PowerPoint presentation slide. SmartArt diagrams are a good way to visually explain and demonstrate something. Similar to shapes, but the element of ‘Smart’ adds to them and allows them to automatically adapt and change as you add to or remove from it.

First Way – using the Insert Tab

We are going to go through the first way to insert a process SmartArt diagram now. This is through the use of the Insert Tab.

Firstly, insert a new slide into your presentation and make sure that the slide layout applied is Title Only or blank if you don’t need a Title box.

To insert a SmartArt diagram, firstly click on the Insert Tab and click on the SmartArt button on the ribbon.

After clicking on this button, the pop up window below should appear on your screen. From here you click on the process option from the list on the left hand side and then select the Basic Process option and then click OK.

This will then insert a the SmartArt diagram into your presentation for you. Once inserted you can resize it to fit in underneath the title box. From here you can edit the text by clicking into the boxes themselves or by clicking on the text pane option on your ribbon where it will give you a pop up box where you can also edit the text. We will cover how to add shapes further down in the post

Second Way – Using the Insert a SmartArt Graphic option in the content box

The second way we are going to look at for inserting a process SmartArt diagram is through the use of the content box on your slide. The content box on your slide is very useful and has a number of icons that you can use to insert something into your slide. For this example we are going to use the insert SmartArt graphic icon.

In your content box hover over the 4th icon on the first row (the words Insert a SmartArt Graphic should appear when you hover over it).

Click on this icon and a pop up window should appear with options for the type of SmartArt graphic you want as it did in the first way mentioned above. From here you follow the same steps as the first way above to choose the SmartArt graphic and insert it into your slide. Same as above, we will go through adding shapes further down in the blog post.

Adding shapes to a SmartArt graphic

Once you have the diagram inserted, you can then add extra shapes to your diagram. To add a shape to your diagram, firstly select an existing shape and then click on the ‘Add Shape’ button on the SmartArt Design Tab. Clicking on the drop down arrow next to the button shows you the options you can choose from. For this type of diagram you can add a shape before or after. This will insert a shape to the left or right of the one you selected in the diagram.

Formatting a SmartArt graphic

Once your SmartArt graphic is inserted into the slide, you can then format it. You can format the appearance of the graphic by changing the colours used by clicking on the Change Colours button on the ribbon or by using the SmartArt Styles gallery on the Chart Design Tab. You can also manually format it by using the Format tab.

The video below shows you how to insert the process SmartArt diagram using these two ways in your PowerPoint presentations. SmartArt diagrams are a good way of displaying data or processes in a more visual way.

Take a look below at the video to find out more and then try them out on your own computer!