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How can I rotate swimlanes in Visio 2013 once the diagram is completed? That is, how do I switch swimlanes from horizontal orientation to vertical, or from vertical to horizontal?

Here's an example diagram:

enter image description here

For a new diagram, I know that swimlanes can be easily rotated with Cross-functional flowchart | Arrange | Orientation.

The problem is when you have finished a diagram (e.g. a BPMN diagram) that has many objects contained within the swimlanes. When you rotate the swimlane orientation, the objects contained are not easily rotated--the result is quite a mess that you have to clean up:

enter image description here

In short:

  • I begin with a complete horizontal BPMN diagram in Visio 2013.
  • I rotate it with Ctrl-A (select all) | Cross-functional flowchart | Arrange | Orientation | Vertical

The result is not the automatic vertical rotation that would be expected; it is rather messy.

Is there a way to get a clean, [mostly] automatic rotation?

Tripartio
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2 Answers2

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I just had this experience as well, the solution, if you haven't found it already, is to mark the swimlanes, go to the coss-functional flowchart tab and click choose the orientation button. That did the trick for me, Good luck!

Rickard N
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  • What do you mean by "mark the swimlanes"? I tried to select the swimlames by clicking on each one with my mouse with the Ctrl key on the keyboard depressed, but it's almost the same messy result as I described in my original post with Ctrl-A. Could you please clarify if and how you got a better result? – Tripartio Feb 04 '16 at 15:49
  • I did a area-mark, one corner of the work area and then one on the opposite site so all swimlanes were marked, ctrl-a gives the same result. Then I used the orientation function on the cross-functional flowchart tab. I just did it on a larger swimlane chart than the last one and it works to change to horizontal and then back to vertical for me at least without messing up the looks of the chart. How do you make the transition to vertical/horizontal? – Rickard N Feb 08 '16 at 07:47
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Under 'Design' tab, choose 'Re-Layout Page' icon. It gives you a drop down options of various layouts such as top-down, left-to-right or right-to-left layouts. You might have to do some refinements on the finished layout, but this feature will make your switch much easier.

user531730
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  • Sorry, I already tried that, but it doesn't rotate swimlanes at all. With a BPMN, it just makes a jumbled mess. – Tripartio Dec 09 '15 at 23:38