Microsoft Word 2003 – Easily Create a Colorful Venn Diagram

I love Venn diagrams because nothing comes close to expressing the logical relationships between different sets of items so well.

With Microsoft Word 2003, you can create great-looking, colorful Venn diagrams on the fly, with as many elements and colors as you need.

It is useful to start the DRAW toolbar first before doing anything else.

Then follow these steps:

1) Click the 3 ball icon (the tooltip text should read “Insert Diagram or Flowchart”) to display the Diagram Gallery dialog.

2) Click and select the Venn diagram icon at the bottom center to insert a default Venn diagram and also to display the mini diagram toolbar.

3) To add a new set of elements (represented by each CIRCLE in the diagram), click the Insert Shape button on the mini toolbar.

4) To move the circular shapes, click the buttons clockwise or counterclockwise until you get the desired position.

5) Click on the text “Click to add text” to enter the text you want to identify the individual items.

6) Click the Wrap Text button to apply text wrapping, if necessary.

7) Click the AutoFormat button on the mini toolbar to select a previously saved format template for the entire diagram.

8) You can change the format of any individual sector by selecting it and then clicking the appropriate format buttons on the DRAW toolbar.

There are quite a few professional graphics creation programs, such as Adobe Illustrator. But why spend the extra money when you have great free graphical tools already built into your MS Word at your disposal?