Excel has had bubble diagrams sine 2003 but they are just an X-Y plot with variable-sized nodes. What Pavel was after is an automatic layout, with lines joining the nodes, along these lines:

Not perfect, but you get the idea, and it’s produced automatically. To do this, you’ll need Excel, Visio, Graphvizio and this zip file which contains the sample XLS, GV, VSD and JPG files.

• Open the XLS. Column A is the node’s title, B is the title and the amount separated by a newline. Columns C, D and E specify the node’s parent, colour and amount. Column F computes the diameter of the node, in inches, from the amount:

Column G just creates Graphviz DOT statements from the values. G1 and G2 are the prelude. Copying column G into a text file called bubble1.gv, we get:

graph  RootGraph {
node [fontname=Arial, fontsize=12, style=filled];

"Total\n620" [width="3.1", height="3.1", color="gray", fillcolor="gray", shape=circle];

"Children, schools, family\n63"--"Total\n620" [color="pink"]; "Children, schools, family\n63" [width="0.315", height="0.315", color="pink", fillcolor="pink", shape=circle];

"Schools\n42"--"Children, schools, family\n63" [color="pink"]; "Schools\n42" [width="0.21", height="0.21", color="pink", fillcolor="pink", shape=circle];

...snip...

}

• Fire up Visio. Graph>Diagram->Import Graphviz
• To get the circular layout, Graph->Settings->Diagram->Concentric
• Graph->Layout
• A little tweaking of the font sizes and line thickness and you’re on your way

Enjoy!

What I wanted was a tool which would unravel the spaghetti, so that I could get a grasp of the relationships, edit and revise them and layout again in an iterative process.
Searching for a solution, I found three layout programs, none of which have a Visio interface:

1. Microsoft Automatic Graph Layout (MSAGL), formerly known as GLEE The first version, GLEE, is free whereas MSAGL costs between 99 USD and 279 USD depending on where you buy it.
2. Tom Sawyer Layout is also a graph layout library, the price isn’t disclosed on their website.
3. Graphviz from AT&T research labs, reputed to have the most sophisticated layout algorithms, is free.

Given that the best quality was to be found in the free library, I made the obvious choice.
It took me over a year and some 11’000 lines of VB to get Visio and Graphviz to co-exist; marrying a Unix-style command-line program with a WYSIWYG interface, both with quirks to numerous to mention, was far more challenging than I initially thought.
The result, unimaginatively called GraphVizio, is available here, I hope you’ll find it useful.

25 May 2011 Version 1.1.5 released. Improvements:

Full support for 64-bit Windows and Visio

No longer makes a Visio document ‘dirty’ when opening

Full support for UTF8. This DOT file:

graph  RootGraph {
  node [width="7.08661417322834", height="0.787401574803148", color="#000000", fillcolor="#FFFFFF", fontname=Calibri, fontsize=24, style=filled, shape=box];
  edge [color="#000000", fillcolor="#FFFFFF"];

  "English: Hello, my name is Maurice\n(and blame Google if the translations are bad)" [pos="283.704566929134,620.932913385827", label="English: Hello, my name is Maurice\n(and blame Google if the translations are bad)"];
  "Russian: Здравствуйте, меня зовут Морис" [pos="283.704566929134,526.932913385827", label="Russian: Здравствуйте, меня зовут Морис"];
  "مرحبا، اسمي موريس : Arabic" [pos="283.704566929134,432.932913385827", label="مرحبا، اسمي موريس : Arabic"];
  "Chinese: 你好，我叫莫里斯" [pos="283.704566929134,338.932913385827", label="Chinese: 你好，我叫莫里斯"];
  "שלום, שמי הוא מוריס : Hebrew" [pos="283.704566929134,244.932913385827", label="שלום, שמי הוא מוריס : Hebrew"];
  "Japanese: こんにちは、私の名前はモーリスです" [pos="283.704566929134,150.932913385826", label="Japanese: こんにちは、私の名前はモーリスです"];
  "Thai: สวัสดีชื่อของฉันคือ Maurice" [pos="283.704566929134,56.9329133858268", label="Thai: สวัสดีชื่อของฉันคือ Maurice"];

  "English: Hello, my name is Maurice\n(and blame Google if the translations are bad)"--"Russian: Здравствуйте, меня зовут Морис";
  "Russian: Здравствуйте, меня зовут Морис"--"مرحبا، اسمي موريس : Arabic";
  "مرحبا، اسمي موريس : Arabic"--"Chinese: 你好，我叫莫里斯";
  "Chinese: 你好，我叫莫里斯"--"שלום, שמי הוא מוריס : Hebrew";
  "שלום, שמי הוא מוריס : Hebrew"--"Japanese: こんにちは、私の名前はモーリスです";
  "Japanese: こんにちは、私の名前はモーリスです"--"Thai: สวัสดีชื่อของฉันคือ Maurice";
}

produces this Visio diagram:

Graphvizio UTF8