Yesterday while going through my feeds, I have landed on this post about the demographics and use-figures of various social networking (2.0) tools, et al (by businessweek) on think:lab blog. When I looked at the BusinessWeek’s graphical representation of demographics and usage figures of social networks, the first thought that came to me is, “well, this is something challenging to do in Excel“. So I started creating the chart in the most famous cell software :D, just to show you how the graph looked on BW site (click on it to see the bigger version),
(Download download the art of excel charting spreadsheet)
First up I tried creating a graphlet, a 10 by 10 cell grid that can be filled by ‘1’s based on a number between 1 and 100. The ‘1’s should be filled from left to right or right to left based on direction mentioned in a cell.
This task is simple, lets say the grid is from a1 to j10 and a11 has ‘the number of cells to be filled’ and a12 has the direction (either “R” or “L”)
The formula for any cell in the range of a1 to j10 would be,
= IF((ROW($a$10)-ROW())*10+11*(IF($a$12=”R”,0,1)) + (-1)^(IF($a$12=”R”,0,1))*((COLUMN($j$10)-COLUMN())+1)< =$a$11,1,"")
the above formula essentially means,
if direction is Left to Right,
if row of the cell * 10 + column of the cell is less than or equal to a11
return “1”
else return “”
else
if row of the cell * 10 + 10 – column of the cell is less than or equal to a11
return “1”
else return “”
Once I have the grid filled with required number of 1’s, I have applied conditional formatting (read: Creating cool dash-boards using excel conditional formatting) to change cell’s a ‘1’ in them to some color and blank ones to gray like this,
The output was something like this,
Now all I have to do is multiply this over the entire 7 columns and 6 rows like the BW’s graph and change the fill colors in conditional formatting. The final output looked something like this (click on it for a bigger version),
To end with, I have found out that doing this type of charts doesnt take much time although you need to have the creative juices to come-up with formats like this. What do you think?
For those of you who want to see how this is done and do a little bit of playing around, download the art of excel charting spreadsheet.
Also read:
- Say good-bye to default chart formats
- Creating cool dash-boards using excel conditional formatting
- PHD’s Excel posts
PS: the images are from BusinessWeek.
13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?