If you need an org chart fast, a template is the quickest starting point: a pre-built structure you fill in with your own people. This page gives you a free Excel org chart template, examples of how to fill it in, and an honest note on when a template is the right call versus when you're better off generating the chart automatically.

We make org chart software (OrgPlease!), so we'll mention it. But the templates here are genuinely free and useful on their own.

The free template

Download the OrgPlease Roster Template (.xlsx). Free, no signup, ready to fill in.

The template is an Excel spreadsheet with the right columns already set up, ready for you to fill in with your own team. It's the most useful format for two reasons: it keeps your data structured, and you can feed the same filled-in file straight into an org chart tool later to generate the chart automatically (more on that below). It also opens fine in Google Sheets if your team uses Google Workspace: open it and choose Save as Google Sheets.

The Excel template: what's in it

The Excel template is built around the three columns every org chart needs, plus eight flexible ones. It ships with example rows so you can see the shape before you replace them:

(The file carries Field 1 through Field 8. Only the first four are shown here, for width.)

The structure is simple:

• Name: how the person appears on the chart. Write "Vacant", "Open", or "TBD" and the row becomes an open position, which is what the last example row does.
• Email: their unique identifier.
• Supervisor Email: the email of the person they report to. The top person leaves this blank. If your existing sheet already calls this column Manager Email or Reports To, those headers are recognized too.
• Field 1 through Field 8: generic slots you label however you like. In the example rows they hold job title, department, city, and position number. Salary, language, or security level fit here just as well.

That's it. Fill in your real people following the example rows, and you have a complete, structured org chart dataset.

How to fill in the template

1. Start at the top. Put your most senior person in the first row and leave their Supervisor Email blank.
2. Add each person. One row per person, with their own email and their manager's email.
3. Double-check the manager emails. Every Supervisor Email value should exactly match an Email value somewhere else in the sheet. This is the most common place errors creep in.
4. Add optional detail. Fill in title, department, or other columns if you want them on the chart.
5. Save. Keep it as Excel to edit later, or export to CSV if you'll upload it to a tool.

Org chart examples

A few common structures, so you can see how the template maps to real organizations:

Flat startup (15 people). One founder or CEO at the top, three or four functional leads reporting directly, and a handful of individual contributors under each. Wide and shallow, so most people sit within two levels of the top.

Functional mid-size company (80 people). CEO at top; VPs of Sales, Engineering, Marketing, and Operations beneath; managers under each VP; and teams under each manager. Three to four levels deep.

Multi-location business. CEO at the top, then either regional heads (if organized by geography) or functional heads (if organized by function). The template handles both. It's just a matter of who points to whom in the Supervisor Email column.

In every case the underlying data is the same shape. Only the reporting relationships differ, which is exactly what the Supervisor Email column captures.

Avoiding the most common template mistakes

A lot of org charts come out wrong because of small data issues in the template, not anything complicated. These are the mistakes I see trip people up most, so watch for them as you fill it in:

• Supervisor Email doesn't match exactly. If Sam's email is sam.lee@company.com but you write sam@company.com in someone's Supervisor Email, the link breaks. Copy-paste emails rather than retyping them.
• More than one blank Supervisor Email. Only the single top person should have a blank manager. If two rows are blank, you get two disconnected "tops."
• Trailing spaces. An invisible space after an email (sam.lee@company.com ) can prevent a match. If a link mysteriously fails, check for stray spaces.
• Merged cells. Merged cells confuse both the eye and any tool that reads the file. Keep one value per cell.
• People listed twice. Duplicates create confusing branches. Each person should appear in exactly one row.

A good habit: after filling in the template, scan the Supervisor Email column top to bottom and confirm every value (except the top person's) appears as someone's Email elsewhere in the sheet.

Customizing the template for your organization

The basic template covers the essentials, but you can adapt it to your needs:

• Add columns for anything you want on each person's card: location, start date, employee ID, or a photo. Add one headed Photo URL with a link to a hosted headshot, and OrgPlease! puts that image on the card. Rows with no photo show clean initials instead.
• Reorder by department by sorting the sheet, which can make a long list easier to fill in and audit. The chart structure comes from the Supervisor Email links, not row order, so sorting is safe.
• Use consistent titles. "VP, Sales" vs "Sales VP" vs "Vice President of Sales" scattered through the sheet looks sloppy on the finished chart. Pick one format.

These small touches make the difference between a chart that looks thrown-together and one that looks deliberate.

When a template is the right choice

Templates are great when:

• You want a chart right now, with no learning curve.
• Your team is small and stable, so you won't be updating constantly.
• You're making a one-off chart for a specific meeting or document.

For those cases, download the template, fill it in, and you're done.

When to skip the template and generate the chart instead

A template has one real limitation: it's static. Every time your team changes, you reopen the file and edit it by hand. For a team that changes regularly, that maintenance adds up. (If you'd rather build your chart visually in PowerPoint instead of a spreadsheet, see our separate guide on how to make an org chart in PowerPoint, though it has the same keep-it-current problem.)

The alternative is to take the same data the template holds (name, email, manager's email) and feed it to a tool that turns it into the chart and rebuilds it whenever the data changes, instead of making you redraw boxes. That's what OrgPlease! does: upload the filled-in spreadsheet and get a clean, living chart in about 60 seconds, free up to 25 people. It's our product, but the point is general. If your chart changes often, generating beats maintaining a template by hand.

A nice path is to start with the spreadsheet template either way. If your team is small and static, the template alone is fine. If it grows or changes, that same filled-in template uploads straight into a tool, so you lose no work by starting with the template now.

Bottom line

A free template is the fastest way to a first org chart, and the spreadsheet version doubles as clean, structured data you can reuse. Download it, follow the example rows, and mind the manager-email links. If your team stays small and stable, the template is all you need. If it changes often, use the template as your data source and let a tool generate the living chart, so you fill it in once instead of forever.

Skip the manual updates. Upload your filled-in template and get a living org chart in about 60 seconds, free up to 25 people. orgplease.com

Related reading: Lire cet article en français · How to make an org chart from a CSV file · Free org chart maker from Excel · Org chart software pricing in 2026