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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
  • 650

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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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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