Auto-Number your Flowchart in Lucidchart

There seems to be a bug, where if I connect multiple lines to end at a single shape, something breaks and the number disappears. 

My current workaround is for all arrows (except the first one) which terminate at a single shape is to draw them to finish just short of touching the shape. Again this seems to work, but its not great because if you look closely there’s a small gap. Not a big deal, but curious if anyone knows a better fix?

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]

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.

Is there a way to use decimals? (example 1.1, 1.2, 1.3?)

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? 

If it would be possible to have the option to shift to 2’s and 3’s that would be amazing! The use case is that we have process maps where the high level process is 3.0 and then steps within that process are 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, etc. Is that possible? 

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. 

This is a super-helpful resource, and will replace time-consuming manual numbering! I’m wondering if it’s possible/how to eliminate specific shape types from the numbering process, so that for example, only Process shapes are numbered, and everything else (flow switches, terminators, etc.) are not. 
Do you have any suggestions on how to edit the formulas here to do so?

Awesome workaround! thanks for the post! 

Q: How do you export those custom numbers to the googlesheet? and how do you adjust the formatting? Such as font of the font, color, border etc from the text badge?

Thanks! 

Hi @z.reiser, apologies for the delayed response here! The original formula builds a mapping of the shape to it's index (as defined by the ordering), so the mapping could be updated to first filter to a particular shape type.

Could you please try something like the following, where ShapeTypeHere is the specific type of block to filter by?

=groupby(map(sort(filter(children, x => and(not(iserror(x.Distance)), itemtype(x) = 'Block', shapetype(x) = 'ShapeTypeHere')), 'asc', x => x.Distance + 0), x => object('id', label(x), 'index', x.index)), x => x.id, x => x.index) 

@ChiliC Thanks for your questions!

Regarding export - to clarify, is your ultimate goal to have a spreadsheet with a column containing the step and another column containing the step number?

Regarding changing the formatting - currently, Lucidchart supports editing the following fields for a badge applied via conditional formatting: style, color, custom hover text, and position. 

These are all available within the conditional formatting menu when creating the “then” part of the rule. If you’d like to see additional attributes, like font and border options, available here, we would love to hear more! We’re very interested in your feedback and committed to continually improving our products. Please first search the Product Feedback section of this community (with the filter Topic Type = Idea) to see if it’s already been submitted. If so, please add any additional details you’d like and upvote the request - this consolidation helps to refine feedback and properly capture the popularity of the request.

If no one has submitted this idea yet, please create one of your own and be sure to include details about your use case or what you’d like to see in this experience. This will also allow other users with similar requests to discover and upvote it, then add details of their own.

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