Chart Components: Paint Format

One of OrgChart’smost powerful modifiers is Paint Format. This amazing tool allows you to take the visual attributes of one component – such as its shape, color and font – and transfer those same attributes directly to other compo­nents in your chart.

The changes can be as sweeping or as precise as you need – from individual com­ponents, to divisions or even to the entire chart. Paint Format even has the ability to focus on specific professions or titles. So, for example, you could create a unique format for each profession, then apply those unique changes across the entire project (such as automatically applying a gold chevron to all supervisors and a green folder to all accountants).

Think of Paint Format as a clone tool that only affects a component’s appear­ance, yet leaves all the component’s unique information intact and unchanged.

Paint Format has two modes:

1. Special mode or Format Painter Wizard.

2. Selection mode (this is on by default).

To toggle between these two modes, click the small arrow to the right of the button (see below):

The Paint Format button will only become active when a single component is currently selected; otherwise it will appear grayed out.

Components: Format Painter Selection mode

Choose this mode when you wish to manually copy format changes. To use Selec­tion mode, do the following:

1. Select the source component which contains the format you wish to copy.
2. Click the Paint Format button. Notice that the button stays depressed.
3. Highlight the destination component(s) you wish to apply the changes to. (For single components, simply click on the component. For multiple components, hold down the Left mouse button and drag a rectangle around the group; the components will appear highlighted when the button is released.)
4. The destination component(s) will now have the same visual format as the source component.

Components: Special mode (Format Painter Wizard)

Select this option when you wish to apply format changes automatically. Special mode works by launching the Paste Format interface (see below):

This interface is divided into two basic areas: 1) Scope and 2) Conditions.

Components: Paint Format Scope

This area determines the range and locations in the chart that your changes are going to affect. The available ranges are:

1. Selection
2. Entire Chart
3. Current Division
4. Division and below

Components: Paint Format Conditions

This area is used to choose which component(s) are going to be affected based on certain parameters. In essence, from here you choose the component(s) that you want to change based on something in their data – such as a name or title.

This is a powerful tool because it allows you to group components based on a relationship between their data. This means that you can either locate, or assign factors for certain components and then control how every one of them appears no matter where they are located in the hierarchy.

This makes Paint Format amazingly efficient at applying sweeping changes that make entire groups, positions and professions immediately recognizable based on their format (such as having all managers appear as blue ovals).

The Conditions area contains the following sections:

1. Apply if meets condition – this box must be checked to activate the rest of the Conditions area.
2. Find what – tells Paint Format what to look for. Any data or text may be entered into this area. Click the arrow on the right to activate a drop down menu which holds a record of the criteria previously entered into this field.
3. Find where – determines which data fields Paint Format is to search when matching the text or data entered into the Find what field. The default is Any Field. If you need to specify one data field in particular, click the drop down menu and a list of all the available data fields will appear.
4. Comparison – click the arrow to open up a menu of additional search parameters (such as Contains (default), Equal to, etc.).
5. Match case – checking this box sets Paint Format to recognize capital let­ters, upper and lower case, etc. (Tip: leave this box unchecked most of the time. When it is active, components may not be found or affected because of simple errors, such as someone forgetting to capitalize a name or title, etc.).
6. Options – click this button to open up a menu of additional options.

Components: Using the Paint Format Special Mode

1. Select the source component which contains the format you wish to copy.
2. Click the Paint Format button – if necessary, click the arrow next to the button and select Special from the dropdown menu.
3. The Paint Format interface will appear.
4. To activate the Conditions area, check the Apply if meet conditions box. The Conditions section will now become active.
5. Type your criteria (position, title, etc.) into the Find what field.
6. Go to the Find where area and choose from the list of available data fields.
7. If necessary, go to the Comparison section, click the arrow to open the drop down menu and choose from the available additional search parameters (the default is Contains).
8. Check the Match case box if you want Paint Format to recognize capital let­ters, upper and lower case, etc.
9. If necessary, specify any additional options with the Options button.
10. Go to the Scope section and click the appropriate radio button to choose the range and locations in the chart that your changes are going to affect.
11. Click OK.
12. When the interface closes, notice that your changes have been applied.