How To Create an Organizational Chart on Mac For Free

If you want to draw an organizational chart on a Mac for free without using org chart software, here we show you how to easily draw an org chart for free on a Mac.

Org charts are essential for maintaining the visibility of a business or organization’s hierarchy and defining clear lines of accountability.

Normally, you need to use specialist organizational chart software to do this but not everyone has the budget or desire to buy a tool for it.

The good news is that you can make a basic org chart for free on a Mac using Apple Pages.

Pages is Apple’s alternative to Microsoft Word and although its mainly designed for word processing and desktop publishing, it can also be used to create simple hierarchy structures on a Mac.

Unlike Microsoft Word, it’s also completely free to use on a Mac too.

There are no specific templates in Pages for drawing org charts, but it doesn’t take long to draw them from scratch by following these instructions.

• Open Apple Pages on your Mac. If you don’t have it, you download it free from the Mac App Store and it works on any version of macOS 13 Ventura or above. If you’re using an earlier version of macOS, you can still use Pages for iCloud instead in any browser.
• Click on File > New and then select Blank Landscape from the templates provided. If you’re using Pages for iCloud, go to the “+” symbol in the top right and select “Pages Document”.

• You can then click on the “Blank Landscape” document for creating an org chart or if you want a portrait layout, just select “Blank Layout” instead.

• Click on the Shapes button in the menu bar across the top and then Insert. You can also drag and drop them onto the canvas if you want. You can then choose from a number of different categorized shapes to construct your org chart. If you’re using the iCloud version of Pages, it looks a bit more like this:

• Select a shape to instantly add it to your canvas. You can remove the color filling and give the shapes a border by clicking on the “Fill” and “Border” tools on the right.
• Once you’ve resized a shape to your liking, you can simply copy and paste the same shape multiple times to give yourself a basic org chart structure. On the desktop version of Pages, you can hold down the Option key while selecting the shape and go to Edit > Duplicate. In Pages for iCloud, you can also use the Edit > Copy then Edit > Paste option in your browser. Pages will help you align the boxes as you place them on the organizational chart.

 

• You can add text such as job titles and names simply double clicking in the middle of the boxes. However, by default, the text will be white which won’t show up on the white background of the or org chart. To fix this, you simply need to go to the font settings on the right and change the color to something visible such as black. You can then edit the boxes appropriately with the correct titles.

• You can add connectors for your hierarchy chart from the Shapes box in Pages. On the desktop version, you can also go to File > Insert > Connection Line. You can choose from Straight, Curved and Arrow Lines.

• You can also change the color of shapes in Pages by going to the Graphic Inspector tab by clicking View > Inspector. If you want to change the color of the border of shapes, change the Stroke settings. In Pages for iCloud, the graphic inspector for shapes will be visible on the right when you click on them.
• If you find that text does not fit inside your shapes, you’ll need to decrease the font size. You can change the alignment of text by using the Format option in the main menu. In Pages for iCloud, these will appear on the right when you click on the text.

• To configure how text wraps around shapes, you can also control this in the Format tool. In Pages for iCloud, the formatting tools will appear on the right when you click on the shapes.

• You can also bend and curve connecting lines by dragging them and change the color by using the Inspector tool. To delete a connector, just select it, hold down the CTRL key and click Delete.
• Finally, you can export any organization charts you create in Pages by going to File > Export To > Images and then choose a format such as JPG or PNG. In Pages for iCloud, click on the three dots and you can choose to export to PDF, Word and EPUB formats.

As you can see, Pages is very limited when it comes to drawing org charts but it’s free and fine for creating basic hierarchy structures on a Mac.

Org Chart Templates For Pages

If all this is a bit too slow and painstaking, then you can also download org chart templates for Pages from templates.net.

Most of these aren’t free though and costs anything from $1.99 upwards per template.

However, if you search the site, there are some also some available for free as long as you attribute the author to them.

Org Chart Software For Mac

To draw professional looking organizational charts we strongly recommend using an org chart software on your Mac.

When it comes to maintaining accurate and updated org charts, the best tools like SmartDraw can automatically draw org charts using data in Excel or by using HR databases such as BambooHR and Workday.

They also include hundreds of org chart templates for almost every conceivable type of company or structure.