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
20 Responses to “Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula”
Hi Chandoo,
First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Wish you and your family another fruitful year ahead.
To answer your question: Power Query is the best way to trim. 🙂
Btw, if Power Query is not available, then formula would absolutely do... but did you forget to mention also Char 32?
One more question: Is the trailing minus meant to be a negative number? Maybe only the sender knows... 🙂
Cheers,
I just see your PQ way, it is amazing, I think it is the most simple way.
No idea how it did it?
I know these spaces can be a real pain but these days I advise Excel users to learn and use Flash Fill and that will learn what to do pretty quickly.
Highlight range to be cleaned. Then, in Replace, hold down the Alt key and type 0160. Replace with nothing.
I accomplished this by writing a macro to go through all the possible unprintable characters. Looped through the range.
@Steve
Brute force works just as well, its just slower
I use a different method here. First, I will copy the data from Excel and paste it in a notepad. In Notepad, I will do a Find Blanks (Space " ") and Replace (Empty) with nothing.
Then you can copy the data from Notepad and paste it back to Excel which will be a perfect number as you desire.
But Thanks for the formula. Its probably the 2nd out of 8 tricks as Chandoo mentioned. Waiting for the rest among 8 from other users 🙂
Hi....
You don't always need notepad for that. I use the Find/Replace is Excel works just fine.
I don't understand the x's. Why weren't they removed in the formula? Or are they part of some sort of numeric formatting that I'm not familiar with? I saw how you handled the non-breaking spaces and the dashes, but am confused about what role the x's played in all this.
Thanks!
Hi Andrew ,
The xs have been used solely to demarcate the actual data text ; thus , without the x in place at the end of text , as in :
x 4,124,500.00 x
it would be impossible to know that there are unwanted trailing characters , in this case , after the last 0.
These xs are not part of the original data text , nor are they used in the formulae ; they are put in only so that readers can visualize the individual items of data as they are in practice. Think of them as imaginary delimiters.
Oh, that makes sense! Thank you for the explanation. I had a feeling it was something along those lines.
You can type this character using the Keys Alt+0160.
Very useful to replace this Character using Find and Select resource.
For many years, my jobs have included ETL tasks and I built this macro to help long, long ago. I tweak it every now and again. Many co-workers, past and present, have it wired to a button on their toolbar.
Sub Clean_and_Trim()
'CAUTION: Strips leading zeroes -- do not use on zipcodes, etc.
If Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
Revert = 1
ElseIf Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual Then
Revert = 0
End If
For Each Cell In Selection
For x = Len(Cell.Value) To 1 Step -1
If Asc(Mid(Cell.Value, x, 1)) = 160 Then
Cell.Replace What:=Chr(160), Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, MatchCase:=True
End If
If Asc(Mid(Cell.Value, x, 1)) = 32 Then
Cell.Replace What:=Chr(32), Replacement:=" ", LookAt:=xlPart, MatchCase:=True
End If
Next x
If Cell.Value "" Then
Cell.Value = Application.Clean(Application.Trim(Cell.Value))
End If
Next
If Revert = 1 Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
ElseIf Revert = 0 Then
Application.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
End If
End Sub
This is awesome! What if you have several characters you need to have removed? What would be the easiest way as I can imagine there are several ways.?
# - 35
$ - 36
- 62
/ - 47
, - 44
. - 46
" - 34
: - 58
This is typical case of a Fitbit data export to Csv file. Each number has CHAR160 as thousand separator.. how smart Fitbit, thank you 😉
By the way, i prefer to copy the character, and use find and replace.
Sometimes it happens if you copy a table from outlook and paste it in excel. When you apply formula on those cells you will get error. What i use to do is
copy one character that looks like space,
select the entire range,
go to Find and replace,
Paste the copied character in Find option
Leave the replace option unfilled..
click on replace all..
All the errors shall be converted in to proper values..
Process looks lengthier.. but it is one of the simplest method
If Clean, Trim, and Substitute, or Find and Replace does not complete the job, I usually enter a value of 1 in an empty cell. Copy the Value of 1, Highlight the range of text numbers, and Paste Special, Values, Multiply. This site is great!
You can use Dose for Excel Add-In that can quickly clean huge data with one click besides more than +100 new functions and features to add to your Excel to save time and effort.
https://www.zbrainsoft.com
Hi,
I have a problem in excel. The sheet attached herewith.
TABLE CONFIG 2/6
A B C D E F G H
1 WEIGHT1 43,599 WEIGH2 62500 WEIGHT3 77000 WEIGHT4 66,500
2 DEDUCTION1 15,000 DEDUCTION1 15,000 TEMP 0 DEDUCTION2 11,005
3 RESULT 58,599 RESULT-1 77,500 RESULT-2 77,000 RESULT-3 77,505
4 RESULT SUBSTRACT 0 0 0
5 REQUIRED VALUE 77,500 77,000 77,505
Note: 1- RESULT (58599) IS TO BE DEDUCTION EITHER FROM D4 OR F4 OR H4 WHICHEVER IS MOST
LEAST CELL AMONG RESULT-1 OR RESULT-2 OR RESULT 3.
2-HENCE, RESULT VALUE $B$3 IS TO BE PRESENTED ON CELL EITHER D4 OR F4 OR H4 WHICHER IS
MOST LEAST VALUE
3-FORMULA =IF(E8<H8,$B$9,IF(E8<J8,$B$9,IF(H8<J8,$B$9,IF(H8<E8,$B$9,IF(J8<H8,$B$9))))))
CREATED ON CELL D4,F4 & H4 DID NOT WORK.
PLS FOR YOUR HELP.
THANK YOU
@R
Why not ask the question in the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
You can attach a file there