When I saw the Olympic medals won by each country by year infographic on nytimes my jaw almost dropped, go ahead see it and come back, I am sure you will love it too.
It is one of the coolest visualizations I have seen in the recent past and I see infographics all the time, its my passion.
So, I wanted to see if this infographic can be done in Excel, not pixel to pixel, but something close enough to pamper my ego. I was able to create something that looked like this:
Download the Total Olympic medals won by each country since 1896 excel sheet and play with it.
If you want to know how this is done, read on 🙂
1. My first challenge is to get the Olympic medal data per country
Thankfully, Olympics site has the medal counts by country data for each of the 25 editions of the summer games, [click here for 1896] I have copy-pasted the data to my sheet.
2. Next challenge is to find average latitude, longitude for all countries in the world
Thankfully CIA World fact book has the exact data for each country in a table, another ctrl+c, ctrl+v and I have the data in my sheet. [slightly refined data can be found on maxmind as well]
3. Now, the data is not clean
Unfortunately the data copied from Olympics site and CIA fact book doesn’t match as country names were different (USA, United States, United States of America for eg.), country names kept changing (do you know that Australia was called as Australasia sometime back.. :D). So I had to do quite some clean up (mainly using vlookup, filtering unique items etc.)
Finally, I had the data in a tabular format, country names, latitude, longitude, total medals won in rows, Olympic years in columns (1896 to 2004, except 1916, 1940 and 1944 when the games were canceled)
I had to convert latitude and longitude to y and x co-ordinates respectively so that I can plot them on 2 dimensions. I used this logic to do it:
x=(180+longitude)*(map-width/360)
y=(90-latitude)*(map-height/180)
4. Add a scroll bar form control and use it to select the year from 25 Olympic years
This was the easy step. I selected Menu > View > Toolbars > Forms to show the forms toolbar and then inserted a scroll bar control to my sheet. Then I associated it with a cell my sheet and limited the values to change between 1 and 25 (each increment for one of the 25 Olympic years)
Now, I have associated this scroll bar cell to fetch one Olympic years worth of data.
5. Create a bubble chart with the medal data
Now that I have the data in the format of x, y co-ordinates, medal count for each country for the selected year, I have created a bubble chart with this information, showing bubbles at each pair of (x,y) in the list.
6. Finally, show an outline map of the world in the background
The last step was easy, I searched for an outline map of the world and used it as my chart background, even though this is not part of the original NY Times infographic, it helps me in ensuring that the bubbles are indeed shown in the right places.
Of course there are some differences between my infographic of Olympic medal count and that of NY Times’, mainly,
- The bubbles overlap, but there is nothing I can do about it without writing additional logic. But as Nathan points out, non-overlapping bubbles may be slightly inaccurate.
- The other is, color of bubbles doesn’t change based on the continent it belongs to. Well, this can be done by editing the bubble colors manually, so I gave up.
- Finally, very few countries are omitted in this, mainly due to geopolitical changes, like Germanies getting united, Koreas getting separated, more countries becoming China :D, I did clean up 99% of the data, but there is always a troublesome country you never heard of.
Make sure you download and play with total Olympic medals won by each country since 1896 excel sheet
What do you think of this?
Also see: The art of excel charting – making ubercool dashboards
Junk the default charts, use this art grade templates instead
Did you fire a bullet graph today?
35 Responses to “Quick and easy Gantt chart using Excel [templates]”
"Please share your experiences and ideas using comments"
For those willing to go VBA, XL can do far more w/Gantt Charts. Compare to PapaGantt. https://sites.google.com/site/beyondexcel/project-updates/papagantt-thebigdaddyofxlganttcharts
While making PapaGantt was neither quick nor easy, using PapaGantt is both, not just for displaying Gantts, but for scheduling tasks as well.
is it possible to get a xls(m) file ?
instead of a zip-file with .xml-files ?
i cannot open it with excel :/
Regards
Stef@n
@Stef@n
Try saving the file and then open from Excel as opposed to opening directly from the post
Also try this link: http://img.chandoo.org/pm/quick-gantt-chart-template.xlsx
Thanks very much for this workbook idea.
To slightly up-scale functionality I added:
1. conditional format for when the cell value =2 to be red which could be used for critical path or other activity highlighting needs (milestones perhaps)
2. conditional format for when the cell value =c to be green which could be used for showing activity progress
3. conditional format for the same range where formula =DATE(YEAR(D$5),MONTH(D$5),DAY(D$5))=TODAY() and set custom to ;;; and cell fill colour to a light blue. This will highlight today down the whole table to allow quick assessment of activity progress to plan. Anything not green upto where the date indicator is shows activity is behind the plan. Opposite for tasks ahead of the plan.
(There is probably a better way to get the same result but this works for now. If there is please post for us to share.)
Hope this made enough sense.
Also, thanks Craig for the link. I'll have a better look soon.
Regards,
Darren
Hey Chandoo,
I actually made one of these for a friend of mine but added an extra level of automation.
Rather than putting in 1 on all the dates the activity occurs, I added a column for start and end date of each project. Then I used formula along the lines of :
=IF(AND(DateAtTop >= Start Date, DateAtTop <= End Date),1,"")
Then used the same conditional formatting where 1 was coloured.
I thought this was a nice touch, especially if a project lasts for many days.
Let me know what you think 😉
Lucas
P.S. First time I've posted here, love your work btw!
Hi Lucas... welcome to the comments and thanks for your first of many comments.
I like the idea. In fact, it was one of the first Excel tricks I ever learned (to use conditional formatting to automate things like this). See this (written almost 6 years ago)
http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/03/13/want-to-be-an-excel-conditional-formatting-rock-star-read-this/
and scroll-down to the tip on gantt charts. 🙂
I liked this approach and tried adding it into the Conditional format via Formula = statement. It workd fine with just the AND statement but then I realised you need the "1"'s to calcluate the duration.
I then put the whole IF statemnt in but it hasnt worked. Any thoughts?
Ta
Hi Lucas and Darren,
I tried the conditional formatting but I really don't succeed in getting the solution. Do you have a template of this?
Thanks in advance
Br
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[…] via Quick and easy Gantt chart using Excel [templates]. […]
Excellent, thanks for this tip and expample.
I had a monthly reporting template very similar to this, but was done in excel which needed more manual inputs.
I used your exmaple and updated my monthly group reporting plan.
I further devided the day into 4 quarters to make it easy for us to followup on different tasks.
Now, I just have to update the start date, and everything gets udpated by itself in fraction of a second.
Thanks once again. love your daily udpates.
Wow.. glad to hear that.
Hi Prahlad,
Can you share ur template even i am looking for similar kind of template .where i want day duration ,split in hrs and each task effort represented in hr spent by each resource .
Thanks
savi
Hi Chandoo,
Can you guide on preparing an indian version of the captioned sheet. We have saturdays working :-(, and only one day weekly off on sunday.
Regards-Prajay
Hi Chandoo,very useful post.i need gantt chart for inventory module.
[…] Quick and easy Gantt chart using Excel […]
Hi.
Really usefull post. I would like to know if i can also include weekends.
Thank you
Hi Chandoo, thank you for the great job, I was wondering if you can customize this sheet for Inventory planning purposes?!
thank you indeed
This was so helpful. ive been through about 10 different tutorial type things and this has to be the best so far, helped me out a great deal. and now my boss is happy i can make gantt charts!
thanks
This's a great post, thanks for sharing
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for the excel tutorial. I wanted to make a simple modification, however it will cause issues with the duration part. I created another rule/cell marked 2. For my project I want to show a projected timeline and then an actual timeline. The issue is that the duration is being logged for when I enter 2, which I want to be projected and not actual. Will you please assist in letting me know how I can create a duration for both project and actual on the same line?
Thank you,
Steven
Showing vertical line between every week is very useful for me, I used to do it manually. Thanks so much!!
But how about, my gantt chart included Saturday & Sunday, and I want to show the vertical line after Sunday, could any expert teach me how to fix it. Thanks again.
This was so helpful - thank you! I had a bit of trouble with the end of the week conditional formatting over-writing the filled cells but switching the order of the rules sorted it out. Needed to put together a gantt chart quickly for an important bid at short notice and this was just the job - thanks for taking the time to post it. Much appreciated.
This is the first time I'm reading a tutorial that actually makes sense 🙂 This is absolutely great, with only one minor issue I can't seem to figure out on my own. How do I include weekends in (or instead of) the Workday formula? Thank you!
[…] This template I made myself but I inspired from Chandoo.org. […]
Hi,
Sometimes I must work at weekends - it is possible to modify the dates so that you can include Sat + Sun as well?
Thanks,
H
Nice gantt chart template chandoo, simple but useful
Thank you so much for this excellent guide! I have adapted this to show scheduled activities at multiple project sites weekly over the course of the year, including active and proposed work. With just a tiny bit of tweaking to your tutorial, I was able to create a chart that suited my needs perfectly!
Thank you very much for idea sharing .very innovative workday formula is showing 5 days but i want 6 days , is there any other option plz reply..
i got it friends..
=WORKDAY.INTL(F4,1,11)
hhhhhh
@Somnath
I also like the structure using =WORKDAY.INTL(F4,1,"0000001")
where each day is a 0 or 1
Hi thanks a lot for the tuto!! It helped me a lot!!
But can you tell me how can I add a vertical line representing today on it?
@Cynthia
Open the template
Select D7:DS26
Goto Conditional formatting
New Rule
Use a Formula
=D$5=today()
then set the format as a Red Right Hand Border only
Apply
Do not select stop here for the rule
Hi Chandoo,
I purchased your Project Management templates a month ago and have not had the chance to thank you for the great templates. Thank you!!!!! It has saved me a lot of time creating and re creating templates. Unfortunately, I had to do a lot of customization but it's not that bad. I am now in the process of customizing my GANTT which my boss thinks is too granular. He doesn't want to see a weekly grant. Only the months should be showing. I have researched and researched but to no avail. Do you have any examples I can look at?
Hi Chandoo,
thanks so much for all your tips on Gantt Table.
I'm actually building one at the moment and want to use the conditional formatting. However, I always get into trouble with that when I have to add new lines. I don't know the final size of my table yet and I eventually also want other people to be able to work with it.
Conditional formatting tends to "split up" into various "applies to" ranges when you insert a new row or copy and past values from somewhere.
I'm sure you've come across this issue already... So far I couldn't find a feasible solution to this. I was wondering if you had an idea / suggestion for me?
Thanks so much!!!
Nadine