On Firday, we proposed a new chart for showing project plans. I chose an ugly name for it and called it Gantt Box Chart.
Essentially, a gantt box chart is what you get when a gantt chart and box plot go to a bar, get drunk and decide to make out. It shows the project plan like any other gantt chart, and it shows the distribution of activity end dates, like any other box plot.
You can see an example gantt box chart for a fictional software project above.
Today, we will learn how to create a similar chart in Excel. Get a steaming cup of coffee or whatever keeps you going and follow these simple steps to make a gantt box chart.
[Read this post if you want to know what GBC is and how to read it]
1. Set up your data:
Just like any other chart in excel, a gantt box chart too requires well structured data. In our case, we need 5 things.
- Activity name
- Start Date
- Best Case End Date
- Realistic (or Plan) End Date
- Worst Case End Date
Getting all the 3 variations of End dates can be tricky. But if you are managing projects for long, you might already know how to get these dates. Otherwise, here is one approach, proposed by Joel Spolsky, called as Evidence Based Scheduling that can help you.
We will also need 3 additional helper columns where we need to calculate some numbers so that our gantt box chart can be constructed without resorting to magic wands. These are,
- BC: Number of days between Start Date and Best Case End Date
- R: Number of days between Best Case End Date and Realistic Date
- W: Number of days between Realistic Date and Worst Case End Date
2. Create a Stacked Bar Chart
Add a new stacked bar chart. The series to be stacked are,
- Best case end date
- R
- W
Use the “Activity Name” column for category axis labels.
Now, our chart should look like:
3. Say your favorite curse word and Reverse the categories
Ok, time for a minor annoyance. Excel has magically showed the first activity of project at bottom. So, we need to reverse the category axis values before any further.
Just select the category axis, go to format axis (press CTRL+1) and click the little box that says “order reverse in Categories”.
Now, the chart should look like this:
4. Add Error Bars to Best Case Series
Now, add error bars to the best case series of the chart so that it looks like a line is drawn connecting best case date to start date of each activity. To do that, follow these steps:
- Select “best case end date” series.
- Add Error Bars (from format ribbon)
- Specify the type of error bar as “Negative only”
- Select “Custom” for error bar values
- Now, point the error bar values to the helper column “BC”
- Format the error bar in such a way that no cap is shown and it is thick.
At this point, our gantt box chart should look like this:
5. Finally, format the chart
Now, our gantt box chart is almost ready. But it is still ugly. We need not hire a Hollywood grade make-up man to beautify this. We just need a few clicks.
- Remove legend
- Add vertical and horizontal grid lines. Make them subtle.
- Change text colors to soothing ones.
- Remove fills from all series in stacked bar chart.
- Apply borders to 2nd and 3rd series to create a box effect.
- Format the date axis,
- Adjust the starting point (unfortunately you have to enter the number equivalent of date, like 1-May-2010 as 40299)
- Adjust major unit – I used 14 days, you can try something else depending on overall project length.
- Set the axis number formatting to d-mmm or mmm or myy or something else that works for you.
- Add a chart title
That is all. Our Gantt Box Chart is finally ready. Now, go figure why your project is not on track and do something about it.
Displaying Completed Activities:
The easiest way to show completed activities is to change all 3 end dates to the same date: that of the actual end date. This way, you just see a line when an activity is done and a box when there are variations in end dates.
Of course, you can use another helper column to show a vertical line or a symbol of your choice to denote the end point as well. I leave it to you to figure out that portion.
Download the Gantt Box Chart Template:
I have prepared an excel template for creating Gantt Box Charts quickly. Go ahead and download the version that you want.
Excel 2007+ version | Excel 2003 version
Here is a mirror with both files as a zip. Go on, be awesome 🙂
Share your experiences of using Gantt Box Chart:
If you like this chart and implementing it in one of your projects, do tell me how it went. Or just share your thoughts on this implementation and any suggestions. Go ahead and share.
Templates & Tutorials on Project Management:
- Excel Gantt Chart Template
- Project Milestones – Timeline Template
- Project Status Dashboard Template
- More resources on using Excel for Project Management
Project Management Template Set – Get a copy today
I have made a set of 24 templates that take care of various activities in a project right from planning to time sheets to issues to project status reporting thru dashboards. These templates have been bought by more than 500 project managers all over the world and they are saving hours of time every week using these templates.
Go ahead and a get a copy of my project management templates.
32 Responses to “More than 3 Conditional Formats in Excel”
Dude,
Long time... whts up , I see that urs is the only business which is posting a "Excel" lent growth in this recessionary market....
Still alive ... so you will be able to reach me if make an attempt... 🙂
V E R Y N I C E !!!!
Hi Chandoo.
When I use your macro in my file, I keep getting a Compile Error because the "cell" variable is not defined.
Any suggestions?
@Lincoln: Did you have "option explicit" on?
I am sorry, I didn't define the cell variable.
you can add this line to the code just below the line "dim i"
dim cellLet me know if you still get this error...
Ah. I've simply declared cell as a range.
All good now
Noob at work.
Thanks for the article. Very helpful. 🙂
very, very helpful. I didn't know what "define named ranges" meant. one of my colleagues figured it out. I suggest you add the instruction "go to menu - insert/name/define and then make sure the cells at the bottom of the box change to reflect new values if you redefine the range." thanks.
Quite Intresting. If anyone could help. I am trying to do something like this but i want to define values and colours of the value in a range of cells ( Similiar) but i want the other cells to change colour when the value is same as the range defined. ANy help. I want instantaneous( Like conditional formatting) not like running macro.
@Jahabar: Welcome to PHD and thanks for the comments.
If your source range and target range have same dimensions and source range has 4 different formats (conditional formatting limitation, unless you are using excel 2007) you can do this. If you have more than 4 formats then you may have to use VBA (and create an event like worksheet_change and monitor the range).
Let me know if you come across a simple non-vba solution for this. 🙂
very nice post...
May I suggest a little modification of the code?
Adding "Application.ScreenUpdating = False" at the beggining of the macro and "Application.ScreenUpdating = True" at the end speeds up significantly the whole procedure. As well as omitting "Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks:=False, Transpose:=False".
Not a big deal in this example, but when formatting a larger range of cells, the difference is marked. I've tried to format the number 1457 of cells and the formatting was done 11 seconds faster. :-O
[...] you can overcome the conditional formatting limitation using VBA macros (again, if you are new to excel, you may want to wait few weeks before plunging in to [...]
Hi Chandoo
Thanks for this macro. I have done few changes to this macro to suit my needs. I had removed the defined names data2use and conditions2use to ActiveWindow.RangeSelection.Address
This way I can select the cells that require conditional formatting and then run the macro.
Kind Regards,
Vasanth
Chandoo, I am using 2007. I noticed the conditional formatting options are different - and they have some built in funtictions for stop light displays, and other dashboard type elements. My question is this, I need to display more colors in the stop light than the standard 3. The World Health Org (WHO) has a Pandemic Flu alert level between 0-6, so i wanted to drive a sharepoint dashboard using excel based on 7 distinct levels. Suggestions?
@ASM: very good idea. you can use font based symbols instead of excel traffic light icons to achieve this. the character "=" becomes a small circle when you change the font to "webdings". So you just need to insert a bunch of = signs and use conditional formatting to change the font color. If you need to combine numbers with symbols, then you can use 2 columns instead of one and format them accordingly. Let me know if you need some more help with this.
Also, if possible, share with us your dashboard when it is ready.
[...] Once we calculate values for all team members using the above formula, we can apply conditional formatting to make the heat map. In Excel 2007, this is one step. In earlier versions of excel, you need to specify 3 conditions to make the heatmap look hot enough or use a macro to get over the 3 conditional formats limitation. [...]
Chandoo,
Why do you use the "conditions2use" since you can change the VBA and replace "conditions2use" with "data2use" and you won't have to create a zone for conditional formating equal to the data zone.
The Data will be formated according the "formats2use". Just one thing, if you plan to have some "0" on your data zone, they will be formated like the first cell above your "formats2use" (the green cell with "Formats" inside in your exemple".
That's why you should leave a white empty cell above the first cell of the "formats2use" zone.
Regards,
Pitichat
Seeing as no one has posted what they actually might use something like this for here's my 2cents;
I used the same concepts to build a heatmap of a casino gaming floor, with each populated cell representing a gaming machine (Slot Machine), some simple metric bucketing to determine different shades for the cells, user selectable colours, ability to pick a 'machine' (click on a cell) and repaint the 'floor' showing only machines with similar charateristics, select a value range and repaint the 'floor' showing only the 'machines' within the value range. Users could switch between metrics and repaint the the floor.
It took a while to put together, but once in use was rolled out to four casinos and used for 4 years. It provided a portable (i.e. no custom software), easy to understand way to manage product from individual machine to groups / classes of product and made it very easy to see how products were performing in geographic relation to each other (something that tables & graphs can't easily do)
Needless to say it "wowed" many people who only saw Excel as a tool for managing numbers and table based reports
Being excel just about any user could maintain spreadsheet.
@ Justin B - Hey Justin, that counds AWESOME! Can I get a copy of the casino tracker, I work within a similar industry and would love to see how you've constructed it.
Also, from using this heatmap, I think I'm getting confused. To make the map change color, I thought you had to change the DATA2USE cells, but I see it only changes if you change the vales of thew cells within the CONDITIONS2USE cells. Am I thinking this wrong?????
Thanks all, this is REALLY making my life easier!!
Hi Dude,
Thanks for this very useful macro. That was very helpful.
Kepp up the good work.
Cheers.
Explanation like yours is so important to everyone that want to learn more and more in Excel. Thanks a lot. You are the man ! 🙂
[...] http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/10/14/more-than-3-conditional-formats-in-excel/ [...]
Chandoo,
If I wanted to replace the numbers 1-9 with text A-I, what would I need to do to the macro to make it work correctly?
Thanks!
@Lee
If the numbers are alone and not part of larger numbers >10 or with text you can simply use this formula
=CHAR(A1+64)Change A1 to your cell
Copy Down/Across as required
Then select the new cells and copy/paste as Values over themselves.
I'm trying to do a drop down list that will allow me to select a color and when I select that color it will change my cell to that color. i cannot use contion formating because I have 5 colors. Can you help me with this?
thanks
This tool was great. Can you please suggest a way to include conditions like if value in a cell lies in a range color some other cell red.
What do I need to change in the programing if I have a mix of numbers and letters. Example; 5003, 2B01, W005, 1020. I think the problem is the CInt code but I'm not sure.
EXCELlent - was able to use your macro with no problems. Found that modifying it to use the DATA2USE range achived the same result as using the condition2use range. If the two ranges were equal, your way allows the data range to have completely different values and still have the same color format at the end.
My data is a little different
I have an irregular shaped building with students in it.
I have a list of students assigned to the rooms with the courses they are on
and a color code for the courses
would there be a way of using indirect to translate the student names to color code the rooms to what courses they are on?
[...] hi Check below link More than 3 Conditional Formats in Microsoft Excel - How to? | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel O... [...]
The ability to conditional format a range of cells based on criteria in a different, but matching for size, range of cells is exactly what I've been looking for. Unfortunately the macro falls over at the line conditions (i) = CInt (cell.value). I have specified the 3 rangenames, working in excel 2003 but cannot get it to work. Any ideas. I've checked rangenames several times (0-16 being used) but no luck. Thanks
Hello you also can use this code to force ur worksheet to run with more then on condition.
in this case the condition = case like in example if u want to format something between of the range 0 to 100 for a color
Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8")) <-- thatch the rage u want to work with just set it up for range of cell u want to use to format
the second formula will show u Interior color nr index just time it and when u format the cell with a color it will show nr in the cell
enjoy
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8"))
If Not I Is Nothing Then
Select Case Target
Case 0 To 100: NewColor = 37 ' light blue
Case 101 To 200: NewColor = 46 ' orange
Case 201 To 300: NewColor = 12 ' dark yellow
Case 301 To 400: NewColor = 10 ' green
Case 401 To 600: NewColor = 3 ' red
Case 601 To 1000: NewColor = 20 ' lighter blue
End Select
Target.Interior.ColorIndex = NewColor
End If
End Sub
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
Range("F1:F1") = Range("F1:F1").Interior.ColorIndex
End Sub
Hi Chandoo,
I tried to add the "More than 3 conditional formats for Excel" VBA macro
to my Excel 2008 for Mac and it didn't work. Would this VBA macro work
with Excel 2011 for Mac? Does it have to be a certain version: Student,
Home & Office, or Standard?
Thanks for your help.
Tom
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