Excel 2013 - SmartArt Hierarchy - limit on number of nodes in hierarchy

Question

I created a SmartArt graphic, choosing the "Hierarchy" graphic. I then put this text (note the ellipsis) in the "type your text here" box.

abc

 def

 ghi

 jkl

  mno

  t

  ...above line repeated 110 more times

After entering that, a warning appears at the bottom of the "Type your text here" box saying "Hierarchy  Anything above marked with a red X will not appear in this SmartArt graphic and will not be saved. Learn more". The Learn more link tells me this:

"It’s just hidden. This happens when you pick a SmartArt graphic layout with a limited number of shapes and you exceed this limit. If you switch to a different SmartArt graphic layout the information below the red X will reappear. "

But when I searched for SmartArt graphic layouts that are unlimited, I see that Hierarchy is supposed to be unlimited. This page shows that all the layouts for hierarchies are unlimited - Shape, tier, and level limits for hierarchies

So how can I bypass this rather small limit of roughly 100 items in a hierarchy?

Answer 1

I have the same problem.

I have no add-ins.

My belief is that the smart art hierarchy option is simply not truly unlimited.

They claim it is unlimited because few people actually need to use so many nodes and therefore no one realises that this is false.

I would happily be proven wrong. I need to make a complex hierarchical chart with 1000 nodes.

Smart Art is excellent to do this because of the instant layout rearrangements, but I am severely limited by this ~300 node limit.

Michael

Answer 2

MF2811, that sounds right. It really annoys me too when I get the pat response from support that doesn't help at all.

I worked around this bug by not using Excel at all. In case you're in the same situation of needing to make a large org-chart or hierarchy, I ended up using graphviz. A command like so:

dot myCustomGraphData.gv | gvpr -c -f "org.g" | neato -Tpdf -n > orgChart.pdf

Where the org.g file was provided by a user named "erg" at this site: http://www.graphviz.org/content/organization-chart (download link is in his post).

Answer 3

Prabhavathi Patil, did you try to reproduce the issue I described? If so, did you reproduce it, or did all the items show up in the hierarchy without a warning?

Answer 4

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Office Community.

Let’s refer to the following steps and check if it helps.

Method 1:

Let’s open Excel in application Safe Mode and check how it works.

To do that, press the ‘Windows + R’ key on the keyboard.

In the Run open box type in ‘Excel /safe’ and hit ok.

Note: There is a space between excel and /.

If application safe mode works, try disabling the add-ins associated with Office applications and check.

To do that, do the following:

1. Open Word or Excel Click on File and then click on options.
2. In the Options Window click on Add-ins.
3. Select Com Add-ins in the Manage list in the Add-ins section and click Go. Now uncheck the all the add-ins and click Ok.

If the issue still persist, you may perform below methods and check if it helps.

Method 2: Repair Office.

Repair the Office installation using the Online Repair feature and check if it helps.

https://support.office.com/en-US/Article/Repair-an-Office-application-7821d4b6-7c1d-4205-aa0e-a6b40c5bb88b

Method 3: Create a new Windows user account.

You may refer to the below article to create new user account and check if it helps.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-user-account#create-user-account=windows-7

Hope it helps. Try the suggestions and let us know the result at your earliest convenience.

Thank you.