Circular Multi-arrows
Visio users have been requesting the ability to add more than five stinking arrows to the Circular Arrow shape. This shape, which comes with Visio, is found in Charts and Graphs > Marketing Diagrams stencil.
Today’s download offers an improved version of this shape. It allows you to add up to 20 arrows, automatically color them, and choose from 3 arrowhead styles!
Microsoft’s Circular Arrow shape is not easily customizable by users, or even crazy people/experts like me. So in true Visio-addict-fashion, I’ve built a better, brand-spankin’ new mousetrap and posted it here for your enjoyment and consumption! Tell your friends: Free Custom Visio Marketing Shapes!!! Now that’s a mouthful!
The shape comes in three flavors: Pointy Arrow, Streamlined Arrow and Bar. Each flavor comes in two “sizes”: up-to-10-arrows and up-to-20-arrows. That’s six bonus masters, just for reading this blog! Count ‘em: SIX! That ought to satiate even the most arrow-hungry of you out there!
The three flavors differ mainly in arrowhead style:
The diagram explains more about how to use the shapes, and the options available via the shape’s context menu. I hope this helps a few of you make even more dazzling marketing diagrams!
Download: CircularMultiArrow.zip (249 KB)
Looking for a PowerPoint version of the Circular Multi-arrows shape? Go here: Circular Multi-arrows in Powerpoint!
Edit 2007.11.26 Visio 2002 format now available:
Circular Multi-arrow (Visio 2007 format) (281.55 KB) - downloaded: 1047 Circular Multi-arrow (Visio 2002 format) (271.27 KB) - downloaded: 416 
Hi CiroM,
If you search this web page, you will find a couple of links that say “Log in” or “Register”.
Either one will work. If you have an account, then you can log in and download, if not, both links will allow you to register as well. Notice that the log in page has a link to “Register” at the bottom, so you can create an account, even if you don’t have one.
Thanks for stopping by!
- Chris
many thanks brother, this really looked great
This download isnt working?
It worked all good! Does anyone know how to adjust the width of the circles?
Hi Blair,
Glad you got the download working.
You can change the size of the whole circle just as you would any other Visio shape: pull on the green selection handles.
To change the thickness of the ring, there is a little yellow control handle at the top of the circle, on the inside of the ring. This changes the width of the arrows.
- Chris
This works great! Thanks
Hi KK,
Glad you like it!
Thanks for your cool stencil!
An idea you may wish to explore:
1. Allow text to be rotated to prevent inverted text on bottom arrows. I had to use WordArt in Powerpoint to create text then cut and paste onto Visio arrows.
Thanks again for a very useful stencil!
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the feedback, but I don’t understand what you mean. All of the text is right-side up for each arrow segment! So I don’t see where the inverted text would happen. Can you clarify?
I downloaded the program and I can resize the object, adjust the thickness of the arrows and change the color spectrum to get shades of one color, but I cannot figure out how to get the multi-colored diagram shown on the page.
@Rick. What exaclty can’t you see? The download file has multi-colored samples that you can copy directly.
Hi
I’m trying to set the colors of the Circular Multi-Arrows using Color by Value, and not getting anywhere!
I can assign my (Access) data to the individual arrows in the circle, but only one of them changes the colors of all the arrows.
If I ungroup the circular arrows after setting them up, all hell breaks loose – I can’t move them and they seem to be protected in many ways which I cannot see.
Is there a way to use data to color the individual arrows, please?
Hi Tony,
As far as I can tell, Visio only allows you to apply data graphics to top-level shapes. Since the arrows are sub-shapes inside of a group, that makes it hard to apply individual data graphics to each (sub) arrow.
The shape has a lot of ShapeSheet programming that makes all of the automatic features possible. When you ungroup the shape, you break the context in which that programming works. Ie: the shape isn’t designed to be ungrouped.
Visio 2010 has the new feature of container shapes that allows shapes to be associated together without being buried inside of groups. It might be possible to re-construct this shape using containers, such that data graphics can be applied.
For now, it would be a lot of work to alter the download in this article to do what you need.