Gantt charts are useful for visualizing a project’s timeline and activity flow. In this article, learn how to create an interactive project gantt chart with drill-down capability using Excel. Here is a demo of the gantt chart we will be creating.
Download the Drill-down Gantt Chart Template
Please click here to download the gantt chart template. Just change the input data and click on “Refresh” button from Data ribbon to update the gantt chart.
If you want more project management templates, please click here.
Step by Step Tutorial - Gantt Chart with Drill-down
Please watch below short tutorial to learn how to create an interactive multi-level project gantt chart in Excel. Alternatively, just read on to get the instructions.
If you want to create a similar gantt chart from your data, Please follow below steps.
Step 1: Get your data
You need at least these four columns of data.
Step 2: Make a pivot table from the data
Insert a pivot table from this data. Set it up as shown below. You need,
- Slicer on “module”
- Activity on row labels
- Start date min on values
- End date max on values
Step 3: Create a gantt chart empty outline
In a new worksheet, set up gantt chart outline like below.
You need,
- 4 columns to display activity, start date, end date and duration
- another 90 narrow columns to show the project plan. Feel free to adjust the number of columns based on your needs.
Step 4: Making the left side of gantt chart
The left side portion of our project plan is rather simple to make. We just need to refer to Pivot Table values to get first three columns (Activity, Start and Finish).
We can then calculate the duration using =NETWORKDAYS(start, finish)
After the duration is calculated, add conditional formatting > data bars to it, so that we can easily spot activities that take too long to complete.
Step 5: Gantt chart grid (right side portion)
Now that our gantt chart is ready on the left, let’s complete the grid.
Start by calculating the earliest project start date using min formula =MIN(plan[Start date])
Place this formula in the grid top left cell, as shown below.
Calculate remaining 89 dates by adding +1 working day. Use =WORKDAY(previous date, 1) formula for this.
This will give us a bunch of dates.
Use the next two rows to show month & day portion of this date by referring to the date calculation row. As the cells are too small, merge 2 or 3 of them and show the values.
Now that all the dates are ready, let’s figure out the logic for making gantt chart view.
As shown above, we need a rule to highlight any cell if the date in top row falls between start and finish dates for the corresponding project activity.
To do this, select the entire grid of 100 rows x 90 columns and apply a new conditional formatting rule.
Use “formula” type rule and apply this formula.
=MEDIAN($C6, $D6, M$3) = M$3
Adjust cell references based on your gantt chart setup.
Related: Using MEDIAN formula to check between condition in Excel
Apply necessary formatting and your gantt chart will be ready.
Step 6: Move the slicer to the gantt chart worksheet
This is the last and easiest step.
Just cut and paste the slicer near the gantt chart. Your interactive chart is ready.
Bells & whistles:
- You can add a conditional formatting rule to highlight current date
- Another rule to highlight alternative rows (zebra-shading)
- Adjust the conditional formatting rule to show completed activities in a different color.
How to update the Gantt Chart?
When ever you have new data, simply update the input data worksheet. Then refresh pivot tables (shortcut: Alt+Ctrl+F5). Your Gantt chart will be updated too.
Download the Drill-down Gantt Chart Template
Please click here to download the gantt chart template. Just change the input data and click on “Refresh” button from Data ribbon to update the gantt chart.
If you want more project management templates, please click here.
Questions or Suggestions?
Got some questions or issues when using this template? Have a suggestion for this Gantt Chart? Please post them in the comments section.
Also check out:
8 Responses to “Pivot Tables from large data-sets – 5 examples”
Do you have links to any sites that can provide free, large, test data sets. Both large in diversity and large in total number of rows.
Good question Ron. I suggest checking out kaggle.com, data.world or create your own with randbetween(). You can also get a complex business data-set from Microsoft Power BI website. It is contoso retail data.
Hi Chandoo,
I work with large data sets all the time (80-200MB files with 100Ks of rows and 20-40 columns) and I've taken a few steps to reduce the size (20-60MB) so they can better shared and work more quickly. These steps include: creating custom calculations in the pivot instead of having additional data columns, deleting the data tab and saving as an xlsb. I've even tried indexmatch instead of vlookup--although I'm not sure that saved much. Are there any other tricks to further reduce the file size? thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Good tips on how to reduce the file size and / or process time. Another thing I would definitely try is to use Data Model to load the data rather than keep it in the file. You would be,
1. connect to source data file thru Power Query
2. filter away any columns / rows that are not needed
3. load the data to model
4. make pivots from it
This would reduce the file size while providing all the answers you need.
Give it a try. See this video for some help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7bpysO3FQ
Normally when Excel processes data it utilizes all four cores on a processor. Is it true that Excel reduces to only using two cores When calculating tables? Same issue if there were two cores present, it would reduce to one in a table?
I ask because, I have personally noticed when i use tables the data is much slower than if I would have filtered it. I like tables for obvious reasons when working with datasets. Is this true.
John:
I don't know if it is true that Excel Table processing only uses 2 threads/cores, but it is entirely possible. The program has to be enabled to handle multiple parallel threads. Excel Lists/Tables were added long ago, at a time when 2 processes was a reasonable upper limit. And, it could be that there simply is no way to program table processing to use more than 2 threads at a time...
When I've got a large data set, I will set my Excel priority to High thru Task Manager to allow it to use more available processing. Never use RealTime priority or you're completely locked up until Excel finishes.
That is a good tip Jen...