Hi @jquigley, 

Thank you for your post! I would recommend after you have edited a template to your liking, making it into a custom template. This way you can use it for future documents. For instructions, check out this Help Center article.

Does this only work when creating new objects yourself? I can’t get my custom template to adopt the right formatting once I import data...

Hi ​@amj_nyc, 

Thank you for the reply! Can you clarify the following so I can better understand your use case?

• What kind of data are you importing? Is it for an Org Chart?
• Have you tried use the Setting default style feature?
• Are you referring to having the same shape style when you add shapes with data to the document?

Can you potentially provide a screenshot?

​@Kelsey Gaag 

• The data is for an org chart. I am importing ~200 rows which creates ~20 separate org charts across different tabs.
• Setting default style doesn’t update my org charts in different tabs.
• I’m never manually adding shapes to the document. The only time shapes are added is when I upload data.

Hi ​@amj_nyc, 

Thank you for confirming! I think the best way to accomplish this is to use conditional formatting. You can customize the rules, but as an example the rule can be ‘if shape data Name is not empty,’  then apply a blue fill, this will impact all Org Chart shapes with imported data and a ‘Name’ data section. After setting up the rule, you can then click the three dots next to the rule and select ‘Apply to All.’ This will apply the rule to all shapes in the document, across page tabs.

Thanks ​@Kelsey Gaag !

It looks like I still have to go tab by tab to select apply to all for all the tabs to get updated. Also, these rules don’t include everything I’d like to format, including bolding name, italicizing location, keeping the same dimensions for each shape, etc. It feels like this should all be included in the custom templated that I created, no? I am not trying to do anything complicated. I don’t understand why this is so hard.

​@Kelsey Gaag This is the simple formatting I’m referencing:

Hi ​@amj_nyc, 

Thank you for the additional context! This isn’t a perfect solution, but if you apply the formatting to one shape in the Org Chart, you can then go to the Contextual Panel > Shape Style > Set current as default. This will set the shape outline, bolding name, and italicizing the location to be the same throughout the chart.

This will apply the same settings to the rest of the shapes in the Org Chart. However, in the other Org charts you will have to apply the format to at least one shape to set it as a default. 

To make all the shapes the same size, there isn’t an exact way to do this in the settings, however, you can select ‘clear overrides’ and this will reset the shape if it was expanded.

For the lines, you will need to select the whole chart, and then change the line color to blue. Hope this helps!

​@Kelsey Gaag In this solution, it seems that I still have to go to every single one of my 20+ tabs to format, which is a lot of time… What is the point of having templates if they don’t apply the formatting? It feels like I need to find time with a product specialist to make sure LucidCharts is actually saving me time

Hi ​@amj_nyc, 

Thank you for the reply! You are correct that this solution would require you to go through your tabs, but will only need to establish this once. Templates don’t apply here as a solution because they can only be proactively used/applied, rather than applying it retroactively. Additionally, templates don’t impact Org Chart shape formatting. 

I apologize for the inconvenience that this causes your work and if you would like to see this functionality implemented, I would recommend posting an idea in Product Feedback section, this will also allow other users with similar requests to discover and upvote it, then add details of their own.