Comparison between Edraw and MS Office

> Basic Diagram Knowledge > Comparison between Edraw and MS Office

Posted by James Freeman | 12/23/2019

On the one hand, it is definitely rewarding to overcome MS Office's shortcomings and find a perfect replacement of Visio and SmartArt tool for diagramming. On the other hand, 100% compatibility with MS programs is also available.

Microsoft Office is doubtlessly the most popular office software now. But when it comes to diagramming and visualization, it still has some limitations. See the following comparison chart.

Edraw VS MS

Comparison between Edraw and MS Office

Firstly let's focus on the limitations of SmartArt for creating orgcharts.JustselectSmartArtfromtheInsertRibbonandthenchooseOrgChart.Thenyoucanfindthatonly15templatesareavailable.Itdoesn't support to add shape and text box at the same time. After one shape is added, the text box must be added separately and the newly added text box is not positioned right over the shape. In a word, SmartArt works reasonably well for small charts but quickly becomes unreadable and cumbersome for large-sized diagrams.

Contrarily, Edraw contains various templates and examples,allowinguserstodownloadandprintdirectly.TheshapesandtextboxesinEdrawaremoreflexible.Theycanbemodifiedasawholeaswellasseparately.Thetextboxaddedtoashapeisperfectlythesamesizeintherightposition.Addinganddeletingshapeswon't affect the overall layout because of the auto connection and relayout functions.

Org Chart Examples

What is worse, SmartArt cannot format the lower positions in the chart so it takes up so much space that it will be hard to fit many shapes on a single page. Edraw offers much more flexibility and polish than SmartArt. Edraw also makes it much easier to move shapes with selection handles and floating action buttons.

For anything but the simplest chart, Edraw is a much more powerful tool for creating organization charts than building them with SmartArt tools in Office.

Edraw's Seamless Integration with MS Programs

Users can enjoy an easy solution for transforming their Edraw org charts into Office programs. One click on the Export button and one click on the format needed will transfer the current document immediately. Here is an example of the exported Word file.

Org Chart to Word

After exportation, all files are editable rather than unchangeable pictures. The exported organizational chart shapes are vector-level in the MS Word. The symbols are completely vector in nature, so you can customize it as per your requirements in MS Word.

Below are some PowerPoint Examples created by Edraw. Click on the pictures to see large versions. You can also download them for free.