Creating a Venn diagram

Created: 2026-07-18 · Updated: 2026-07-26

The Venn panel builds set diagrams straight onto the slide — with 2 to 7 sets, either as a complete Venn or as a ring arrangement. Texts and colours can be set per area, and the appearance saved as a template. A diagram you have already created can be read back and edited at any time instead of being rebuilt.

Opening

On the ribbon, go to PPPTools → group „Venn (neu)" and click Venn-Diagramm. The panel opens on the right.

It has three tabs: Einstellungen (structure and templates), Texte (all labels) and Format (colours and lines). The buttons Neu erzeugen (create), Aktualisieren (update) and Einstellungen aus markiertem Diagramm übernehmen (read back from selection), together with the status line, are fixed at the bottom and reachable from every tab.

Structure

Sets and arrangement

At the top of the Einstellungen tab a small live preview shows the circle layout. It reacts instantly to the number of sets, orientation, arrangement and size — so you see the result before placing it on the slide.

Orientation (Ausrichtung)

The orientation rotates the whole diagram — it decides where the first set (A) sits:

Arrangement: complete or ring

This is the key decision as soon as there are more than three sets:

• Vollständiges Venn (complete) — every circle overlaps, all of them together in the centre. The classic Venn diagram. With circles it is only complete up to 3 sets (that is geometry, not an add-in limit). From four sets onwards, some areas are inevitably missing.
• Ring — the circles are placed around a ring, only neighbours overlap and the centre stays open. This is the arrangement seen on business slides and the right choice from 4 sets on. Works up to 7 sets. With the Mitte als eigene Fläche option you can, from 4 sets on, add an actual centre circle that shows a shared core and can be coloured and labelled like any other area.

If you pick Vollständig with four or more sets, the panel points it out: the note below the arrangement switches to the accent colour and states how many areas actually appear. Areas that cannot be drawn are greyed out in the Texte and Format tabs.

Cutting areas apart

By default the circles stay whole and the blended colours come from transparency. This is robust and works with any number of sets.

With Flächen echt zerschneiden the circles are split into genuine separate areas instead. Every intersection then becomes its own shape and can be coloured freely — including a colour that mere overlaying would never produce.

Cutting works with any number of sets. Only the areas that actually exist for the chosen arrangement are created — in a ring these are the single sets and the neighbour intersections, so a manageable number. A complete Venn with many sets produces very many areas (5 sets = 31); there the ring is usually the better choice.

Texts

The Texte tab has three blocks that adapt automatically to the chosen number of sets:

Every row has a button on the right showing the current font (e.g. Arial 14). Clicking it opens the font picker including colour.

Empty fields create no shape. If you only want to label the three circles, simply leave the area texts empty — no empty text frames will be placed on the slide.

Insert example texts fills every field — title, sets and areas — with a themed example for the current number of sets (2–3 sets an animal example, 4 sets IKIGAI, 5 sets Customer Journey). It overwrites all existing texts; if you have already typed something, it asks once first. This keeps stale area texts from lingering when you change the number of sets.

Format

Mode

From about a dozen areas onwards the panel points out that the first mode is usually more practical.

Values per area

Colour scheme (Farbschema)

Instead of colouring every area by hand, pick a ready-made palette under Farbschema and click Anwenden. A colour scheme is a palette of base colours — one per set; the intersection colours are derived from them (blended, and a little darker with nesting depth). Every scheme therefore adapts automatically to 2 to 7 sets.

The same palettes as in the word-cloud tool are available — from Neon, Pastell and Ozean through Nordic, Beere and Sonnenuntergang to Foliensatz-Farben (the accent colours of the active design). Plus gradients such as Blau → Türkis or Violett → Pink: these are stretched evenly across the sets, producing a smooth colour gradient around the whole ring.

Templates

Five templates are built in: Default, Complementary, RGB, Creative Moon and Only Two. Your own templates are stored per user and are therefore available in every presentation.

Built-in templates can neither be overwritten nor deleted.

Creating and changing

The last one is the actual workflow for changes: click the diagram, read it back, adjust it in the panel, update. All settings including the texts come back, because they are stored inside the presentation — even after closing and reopening the file, and on a different machine too.

Examples

A classic three-circle Venn

1. Set Mengen to 3 Mengen and Anordnung to Vollständiges Venn
2. Apply the Default template
3. In the Texte tab, label the three sets and leave the area texts empty
4. Click Neu erzeugen

Four areas as a ring

1. Set Mengen to 4 Mengen and Anordnung to Ring
2. Switch on Mitte als eigene Fläche if a shared core should be shown — this creates an actual centre circle that you label under „Mitte" in the Texte tab and colour in the Format tab
3. Set the format mode to Alle Flächen wie die erste, transparency around 40 %
4. Click Neu erzeugen

Highlighting one intersection

1. Mengen 3, switch on Flächen echt zerschneiden
2. Set the format mode to Jede Fläche einzeln
3. Give A ∩ B ∩ C an accent colour and transparency 0
4. Click Neu erzeugen

Notes

• The diagram is inserted as a group and can be moved and scaled as a whole.
• Changes to size or position on the slide survive an update — the diagram is rebuilt around its centre point.
• Cut areas are ordinary PowerPoint shapes: if you recolour individual areas by hand after creating them, those changes are lost on the next update.
• Text boxes size themselves to their content and are centred on their area.