Auto-Number your Flowchart in Lucidchart

Thanks for your response. Currently there is no way to label your flowchart using letters (a b c…). However we are always looking for ways to improve. Would you mind sharing your feedback or any clarifying details about what you'd like to use the letter numbering for? We greatly appreciate your feedback!

I get some sort of error though when creating the page data (step 3):

Wondering if you might have any ideas what I'm doing wrong, or if there's a better place to get at the elbow support on this?  Thanks so much - this feature is a godsend.

can it also be numbered by letters also like abc?

It is actually possible to number using letters instead of numbers, but the formula becomes slightly more complex.

In order to number by letter, we need to be able to convert the index (1, 2, 3, ...) into a letter. There are two formula functions we can use to do that, CODE and CHAR. Generically, the formula looks like this for a given number (with 1 => A, 2 => B, etc.):

char(code('A') + number - 1)

This only works with letters A through Z (numbers 1 through 26), however, so the formula gets slightly more complex to handle numbers above 26. In order to do that, we need to handle each digit separately. For values up to 702, using the following formula in place of Step 3 will work to number using letters (where they are lettered with A to Z, then AA to ZZ):
=groupby(map(sort(filter(children, x => and(not(iserror(x.Distance)), itemtype(x) = 'Block')), 'asc', x => x.Distance + 0), x => object('id', label(x), 'index', if(x.index > 26, char(code('A') + floor((x.index - 1) / 26) - 1) & char(code('A') + mod(x.index - 1, 26)), char(code('A') + x.index - 1)))), x => x.id, x => x.index)

This results in this numbering, which is valid for up to 702 shapes (ZZ):

Beyond 702, the formula becomes much more complex.

@aaronpatkramer We don’t currently have any video tutorials on this, but we’re more than happy to take a look at what you’re seeing. Is there a particular question you have or step you’re having difficulty with?

@arhmcleod Thanks for sharing this insight with us - I’m glad that you were able to resolve it and get it to work! 

And great catch - I’ve corrected this in the original post. 

With multiple lines connecting into a shape, the value for upstreamdeep.Start returns multiple values, which causes the formula =count(upstreamdeep) + upstreamdeep.Start to fail.

A workaround would be to choose the first upstreamdeep.Start value (from the original post, there should only be a single shape with a Start value). To do this, change the Distance formula to:

=count(upstreamdeep) + asarray(upstreamdeep.Start)[1]

Hi @Hbusey, thanks for continuing this thread! To clarify, would all steps in your flowchart begin with a “1”, or would your process at some point shift to 2’s (2.1, 2.2, 2.3...), 3’s (3.1, 3.2, 3.3...) and so on? 

I see, thank you! The difficult aspect here is converting the index of the shape into the desired sub-step label, in the same way in the example above we had to convert the index of the shape into a letter, as well as telling Lucidchart at which point steps shift to 2’s and 3’s. I’ll tag in @geoffmaddox and @khaleesioflucidchart as formula pros for their insight here.