In this post I walk you through all the steps needed to create an amazing Fishbone diagram in Excel, without having to manually draw or paint anything. The steps presented here can be used to create any Fishbone diagram suited for your specific situation.

What is a Fishbone Diagram?
A fishbone diagram is a commonly used tool in quality management and is also known as a cause-and-effect diagram or an Ishikawa diagram (after its creator, Kaoru Ishikawa), the fishbone diagram can help us identify the possible causes for a problem by sorting ideas into useful categories and subcategories as needed in structuring brainstorming sessions. This diagram is also useful for root-cause analysis.
It’s called a fishbone diagram because when completed, the chart is shaped like a fish skeleton consisting of a head (typically facing right, a tail at opposite end, a horizontal spine connecting them, and lines representing fish bones out of the spine in up and down directions that connect the causes and subcategories.
The categories and subcategories are typically filled out during the brainstorming session from inputs of the participants. It was famously used by Mazda Motors in the development of Miata sports car [citation].
A Sample Scenario
My scenario is a hypothetical restaurant that’s trying to understand the causes of persistent customer dissatisfaction. This is the problem on hand.
A brainstorming session is called and with feedbacks, the main categories are identified, followed by subcategories. These are captured in a simple table, which will be the foundation of the Fishbone diagram. Ultimately, a Fishbone diagram will be created to depict the discussed cause and effects in a structured visualization that’s easy to understand at a glimpse.
An action plan (aka action register) is also generated in parallel or after noting the actions to be taken to address each of the items depicted in the diagram along with the person responsible (owner) for the actions, and their status (not started/started/completed, etc.).
My data table looks like this:

My goal is to create a diagram that looks something like my sketch below.

Building One in Excel: A step-by-step guide
I started with a stock image of a fish skeleton that’s avaiable for free for Office 365 and Office 2024 users. To get the image, here are the steps: In a new spreadsheet, from Insert menu, select Pictures -> Place over Cells-> Stock Images
Then click on Icon tab on the dialog, and search for “fish”. Select an icon I like from there and click Insert. (This places the image on your sheet; the original image is shown above in this article for reference).
Once the icon or image is inserted:
Select the image, from Graphics Format, select Convert to Shape. Select the image (now it’s a shape) again and now instead of Graphics Format menu, you get Shape Format menu. This means the image is converted to a shape that you can manipulate further. The image should appear as below with handles at this step:

You can resize or change the proportions freely by dragging the edges and corners of this image shape. The editable points on the shape now will show handles that you can stretch and move around. For parts that are joined, such as the fish eye, it can even be moved freely anywhere.
Next, click on a part of the shape that’s not transparent, then from Shape Format menu, click Edit Shape dropdown in the ribbon, select Edit Points. (If Edit Points is disabled, that means you’ve selected the container of the shape and not a part of the shape, so click on a non-transparent part of the shape and try again).
Once I reshaped the lines to my liking, I inserted a Text Box from Insert menu. And set the text inside the box via formula (=$column$row) and pointed to my data table by cell reference, instead of typing them there. That way, whenever the items change, the text box will dynamically update on the diagram.
Additional text boxes were added for all major causes, and subcategories. Each text box can be customized further by right-clicking it selecting Format Shape for the desired look. Arrange the text boxes along the fishbones. Then insert an arrow from Smart Shapes and connect each of the subcategory text boxes to the appropriate branch (bone) under the main category nodes. The entire underlying fish shape’s color can also be easiy changed with one-click choice from Themes. Select the fish shape then from Shape Format, select a style from the drop-down choices in Shape Styles group.
Finally, select all the text boxes, arrows, and the fish shape (hold down control and click each element) and from Shape Format menu, slelect Group->Group. From now on, the entire arrangement can be moved, resized together without having to individually adjust anything.
And here’s the final diagram:

And we have it. Without having to leave Excel, I was able to get an image I like, completely customized it, added the remaining elements using Smart Shapes, and made it as dynamic as possible by referencing each node to data values in a table that’ll always stay updated. By grouping all the elements into a single entity, the entire composition can be copied, moved, rescaled at will without having to rearrange any.
I hope you found this post helpful and interesting. Explore this site for more tips and articles. Be sure to also check out my Patreon site where you can find free downloads and optional fee-based code and documentation. Thanks for visiting!
If you’re interested in procuring this solution for your personal or corporate use (individual license, no reselling allowed), please contact me via the Contact page and I can send the complete solution with instructions that you can customize for your needs.
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