One of the most frequent tasks for any manager is “planning”, be it putting together a hiring schedule or designing a jumbo jet, it all starts with a simple project plan and gantt chart is simple and intuitive representation of the same. But how to make a gantt chart in excel without writing too many formulas or adding conditional formats? Do not worry! with the simple trick we are going to learn today, you will be able to “gantt in 60 seconds” 🙂
You dont have even 60 seconds, worry not, download the free gantt chart template and get your project plan ready in 6 seconds.
For our example purposes, we will look at a fictitious project plan shown below:
Even though you can use this trick to pretty much any data format, it works better when the project plan is structured around how I represented it above.
Now lets build a gantt chart in 60 seconds, get your stopwatches out and get, set …. GO!
1. Create a bar graph
Select the data part of your plan (ie all the cells except header row in the above table) and click on chart icon in excel. Select “bar chart” as chart type and “stacked bar 2d” as sub-type (2nd left on the top row) as shown here.
Click finish. At this point your gantt chart should look like this:
2. Transform your bar graph to gantt chart
Now we will convert this stacked bar graph to a gantt chart by using chart formatting options.
- First we will reverse the way data is charted, so that it looks like a gantt chart. For this we need to right click anywhere on the “y-axis” of the graph and select “format” option. Go to “scale” tab and check “Categories in reverse order” option.
Click ok, now out gantt chart should look like this:
btw, what is the time on that stop clock, 34 seconds, well, thats just fine, we have got plenty of time to spruce this up.
- Now, lets get rid of first data series so that our graph looks more like gantt chart. Select the first data series of your chart (should be in violet blue color 🙂 ), right click and go to “format data series” option.
Select “none” for “border” and “area” options in the “patterns” tab. This will make sure that the first series is invisible, so we see second data series floating on the chart, thus making it look almost like a gantt chart.
Go to “data labels” tab and check “category name” option. This will make sure our gantt chart will show labels (but on the now invisible first data series)
Click ok, at this point our gantt chart should look like this:
- Finally we will adjust labels and backgrounds to convert this to a perfect gantt chart
- First lets remove the legend box on the right by selecting it and hitting “del” key.
- Now, lets also remove the y-axis since labels are visible on data-series 1. Just click on the y-axis (or category axis) and hit “del” again.
- Lets adjust the alignment of the data labels on series 1 so that they are properly visible. Right-click on the data labels and select “format” option. Go to “alignment” tab in the dialog and select “Right” for horizontal alignment and “inside end” for label position. This will ensure that our data labels are right aligned and shown at the end of data series 1, ie closer to the actual series 2 (duration of the task). See the below screen cap for more help.
- Lets also remove the plot back ground to remove the annoying grey color from our gantt chart. Just click on the grey color anywhere and hit “del”. While we are at it, you can also change the line color of x-axis (the days) to white or transparent to reduce the eye sore.
- Finally, lets adjust the plot area size so that we can read all the data labels and everything looks normal.
At this point our gantt chart should look something like this:
If you still have few seconds left, you can tweak the chart format to make it look better. I had 3 more seconds left, so I tried this 🙂
Feel free to download the free gantt chart template and see how to create gantt charts using excel bar graphs.
Bonus tips for enthusiastic excel experimenters:
1. Adjust the grid line format to make them more subtle
2. Select a particular task’s data point and change its color to emphasize progress / stalled statuses
3. Enhance this to add another column with no. of resources (or difficulty etc.), add this to the stacked chart and make it invisible just like series 1, but show the data labels.
4. You get the picture… so start gantting… 😀
Also read:
Learn how to create project plans / gantt charts using conditional formatting
Create art grade excel charts with these 73 designer templates
Other uber cool excel tricks to make your colleagues zealous and your boss happy
24 Responses to “10 Supercool UI Improvements in Excel 2010”
The best improvement by far is the Collapse Ribbon ^ button !
Kind of a shame that some of the best improvements are actually returns to old functionality. One thing I don't like is that to get to recent files I need to do an extra click after File - apart from Save As, that's why I'm usually in the File menu. I like the sparkline options, though they are still as not fully featured as some of the free and pay options out there.
The collapse button for the ribbon menu is good news. Can you make the ribbon menus stick too?
Nine improvements, not ten. You can also select multiple objects in 2007. Click on the Find & Select item at the far right of the Home tab, and the dropdown looks remarkably like your 2010 screenshot.
@Jon.. Thank you. Dumb me, I somehow thought we couldnt select objects in Excel 2007. Just saw the "select menu" and it is there. I have corrected the post and removed the point. I have added the "you can make your own ribbons" instead. Thanks once again.
@Arti: what do you mean by make ribbons stick?
@Alex: May be it is my installation, but when I go to "File menu" I see "recent files" by default.
For example, if I am working with one of the contextual ribbon menus (Pivot tables, Drawing/Chart etc), as soon as I click away from the selected object, the menu tabs vanish. If I click on the object again immediately, then Excel will remember what I was looking at, but if I wander away and click on a Pivot, then back again on the Chart, the menus will 'appear' but not get activated, thereby causing much annoyance and additional clicking.
I want to "pin" the whole menu (not invididual commands) somehow, so that I can have the menu there for the length of the time I am working with graphics. Excel 2003 used to have the Drawing toolbar you could detach and hover while you were working, but this functionality disappeared in Excel 2007.
My thought was Excel should just allow a 'pin', similar to the Recently Opened files menu, for the Ribbon Menus as well. If I have not selected any Drawing object, the commands can be greyed out, but I want the menu as a whole to 'stick'.
@Arti... I think MS solved this problem differently. When I select a pivot and go to "design" tab Excel 2010 remembers this and automatically takes me to "design" tab when I reselect the pivot.
Apart from this you can also define your own ribbon with all the things you normally do. See the above article (I have added this after Jon's comments)
Nice feature. About time for a upgrade for MS Office
Oh... okay. That might be a start. I'd probably just copy-paste the Drawing tab haha. Thanks. I'll definitely give Excel 2010 a try.
Btw - have you considered getting into / gotten into the world of Excel as it meets SharePoint?
Actually, the replacement new thing is probably better than all the rest. One thing that the designers of the Office 2007 ignored was allowing regular users to customize their own interface. Office 2010's interface was expanded in this way to address the huge uproar.
Is there still a limit on how many things you can add to the QAT bar? (I'm too lazy to look myself.)
@Jeff.. it seems to take quite a few, but only shows one line and gives a little arrow button at the end. (summary: shucks!)
The best thing is you can edit the ribbon directly from excel, so now i can create my own bar with just the things I use regularly!
One of the annoying things in 07 for me is the Add-Ins menu bar - in 03 I could keystroke directly to menu add ins.. In 07 I needed an extra keystroke just to activate the add-in menu, then the keystrokes as normal.. Hope this marek sense..
John -
If you remember the old Excel 2003 Alt-key shortcuts, you can still use them in 2007. To get to the Add-In dialog:
Alt-T-I
Dear Arti & Chandoo
Seen your comments over some issues. Hope you are form India, gone through your comment expecting a pin to command it as a whole, great, hope if someone out of MS have read it, it may be kept in mind while the next R & D of Office Ver. 16
Just incase someone forgot CTRL+F1 will collapse the ribbon.
[...] was pleasantly surprised when I ran Microsoft Excel 2010 for first time. It felt smooth, fast, responsive and looked great on my [...]
I like the sparklines, and the ability to modify the charts
How do you get rid of the advertisment on the right hand side? If you upgrade then will it take off the ads?
Once again Microsoft has re-decorated the Office and we are NOT pleased!
The graphics object selector can be found in the Home ribbon under Find & Select, Select Objects near the bottom of the drop down. You can make it part of the Quick Access toolbar by right click over it and selecting Add to Quick Access toolbar.
The graphics "cursor" will now appear on the mini-toolbar at the top left of the window.
How to get rid of "Add-Ins" button in Backstage (File)" menu by means of XML code, i.e. to hide, to delete or to disable this button?
This button is usually situated in the Backstage menu between "Help" and "Options" buttons.
Vladimir, did you ever get an answer to your question?
I am tying to customize the ribbon UI for a file using XML, and this is precisely the piece I can't figure out. I can hide other tabs, remove items from QAT and backstage - all except the options that are showing up under add-ins in backstage. If there is an XML syntax for referencing this thing and making it invisible, I cannot find it.
Hey, nice tutorial. Please check my video tutorial on similar topic at the below link and provide your comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIFc0jYjpA