Quick and easy Gantt chart using Excel [templates]

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Gantt charts are a very popular way to visually depict project plans. Today, let us learn how to use Excel to make quick & easy Project Plan Gantt Chart.

This is what we will be creating,

Quick gantt chart using Excel - download template

Step 1: Set up project plan grid

First step is simple.

In a blank worksheet, set up an empty grid like this:

Quick gantt chart - data entry grid explained

Key things to note:

  • Project start date goes in to cell C3
  • Project dates appear from cell D5 & D6 onwards, one day per column.
  • Make the grid as big as you want. I choose 20 activities x 120 days.

Step 2: Fill up dates

Now, lets load the dates in to the plan. The first day of the project is known (it is in cell C3.)

  1. Select D5 and point it to C3 by typing =C3
  2. Set D6 to the same value as D5 by typing = D6
  3. Now, both D5 & D6 contain the same date. (Why 2 dates? You will understand in a minute!)
  4. In next column (E), we want the next working day.
  5. So in E5 type =WORKDAY(D5, 1)
  6. Now, select D5:E5, format them so only DAY portion of date is shown. To do this, press CTRL+1 after selecting them, in Number tab, select Custom and type d, click ok.
  7. Select D6, format it so only the first letter of the month is shown instead of entire date. To do this, set number format code as MMMMM.
  8. Drag E5 sideways for all the dates.
  9. Drag D6 sideways for all the dates.
  10. Our dates are ready!

Here is a demo of all the steps:

Demo of formulas for filling up dates - Quick gantt chart using Excel

Step 3: Enter project plan data

Now that our grid is ready, enter the data. This is simple. Just type 1 whenever an activity is happening on a date. For example, if Activity 1 happens on 18th & 19th of February, type 1 in both cells.

Project plan data - Quick gantt chart template

Step 4: Calculating Duration

This is really simple. In the duration column, select first cell and type =COUNT(D7:DS7)

Note: Make sure you change the cell references based on the number of columns and where your data is!

Drag down the formula to get duration for all activities.

Step 5: Apply conditional formatting

Now that all the plan data is ready, lets tell Excel to highlight all 1’s so that we get a Gantt chart. Quick & Easy!

  1. Select the entire grid (excluding activity names, durations & dates)
  2. Go to Home > Conditional formatting > New rule (Related: Introduction to conditional formatting)
  3. Specify a rule to fill color in all cells with 1.
  4. Also, set cell formatting to ;;; so that the contents (ie 1s) are not visible. (Related: Making cell contents invisible)
  5. See the conditional formatting rule I have used below:

Conditional formatting rule for quick gantt chart - explained

Bonus trick: Visually separate weeks with a border

Since our plan has many weeks, it would be cool to show a vertical line between every week. To do this:

  1. Select the grid again.
  2. Add a new conditional formatting rule
  3. Select the type of rule as “Use a formula…”
  4. Use this formula =WEEKDAY(D$5) = 6
  5. Set up formatting so that right-side vertical border is shown when the rule is met.
  6. You are done!

Conditional formatting rule for highlighting weeks - quick gantt chart in excel

That’s all, our quick Gantt chart is ready

That is all. Your quick project plan is ready. Go ahead and show it off. Use it for an upcoming project and impress your boss.

Download the quick Gantt chart template

Click here to download the template. It contains instructions on how to modify the template. Go ahead and example the formulas, conditional formatting rules to understand more.

How do you like this quick & easy template?

Although I have a lot of complex project plan templates, often I rely something quick & easy like this. It simply works and lets me focus on the project at hand.

What about you? Do you use quick templates like this? Please share your experiences and ideas using comments.

More on Project Management using Excel

Are you a project manager or analyst? Here are a few more examples, templates & resources for you.

If you are a project manager or analyst, you would be working with Gantt charts, status reports, issue trackers & project dashboards every day. If you are tired of creating these from scratch, get my Excel Project Management template pack.

It contains 25+ Excel templates for various needs of project management – right from planning to tracking to reporting. All beautifully designed and easy to customize so that you can be an awesome project manager.

Click here to know more and get your copy today.

 

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28 Responses to “2010 Calendar – Excel Template [Downloads]”

  1. [...] Download and print the calendars today. You can add notes to individual dates or complete … [...] Uni Ego / Free 2010 Calendar – Download and Print Year 2010 Calendar today [...]

  2. William says:

    Afternoon,

    I have one similar calander that I added conditional formatting to so that I could highlight any planned factory holidays. I think i "borrowed" the formula from another calander so I won't post it here.

    I also added week numbers to it using the formula =WEEKNUM(MAX(C6:I6)) Where C6:I6 is the range of dates in that give week. It works fine on most of the months but return strange values on other months (Week 6 in October?) I can't see any logic behind why it does this.
    Any suggestions for an alternative formula to give the week numbers?

    Regards,

    William

  3. Miguel says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    I've added a new feature on your spreadsheet.
    This control can be useful for all the sheets where you need to check dates.

    Cheers

    http://cid-69a78592a23a8438.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/2010-calendar%5E_Miguel.xls

  4. Nimesh says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Nice calendar.
    Till now whichever calendar I saw in Excel, it contained only the outline sheet.
    Good to see monthly views and the mini view too.
    Liked the mini view much. 🙂

    -Nimesh

  5. Chandoo says:

    @William: This weeknum may be because the input dates to max are not properly formatting as excel dates.

    Good tip on the conditional formatting and holidays btw...

    @Migueal: Now that is super awesome. This is the reason why I love to blog. Readers will always one up me with such cool alternatives. Thank you for sharing this with us.

    @Nimesh: You are welcome 🙂

  6. Shish says:

    is it possible to get the Notes section on the outline page to display the notes added to the month page for a specific date?

    So if you add thing for January 2nd, and then select January 2nd those notes appear on the outline page

  7. Chandoo says:

    @Shish... You can do that using some formula magic. I would not recommend pushing excel to that as outlook / google calendar / icalc etc. do exactly that much more elegantly.

  8. Jörg says:

    Happy christmas to all of you!
    This is really awesome. The nicest calender I've seen for Excel. I also like Miguels version of the sheet.

    Just one "feature" is missing to me. As I live in Germany - where weeks start on Monday - I'd like to change this. Could someone please give me a hint how to do this?

    Thanks in advance

    Jörg

  9. Pedro says:

    Hi Chandoo, I’ve added some new features on your spreadsheet with your permission.

    Check it here:
    http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Calendar%5E_Pedro.xlsm

    Miguel, this calendar is translated to Spanish language.

    Jörg, this new approach allows us to start weeks on Monday.

    Also it's possible to start weeks on Sunday if you enable Excel macros and push the arrows.
    Best Regards,
    Pedro.

  10. Chandoo says:

    @Pedro.. superb stuff.. thanks for sharing the file with all of us.

  11. Pedro says:

    Hi Chandoo, for dates before March 1, 1900 our calendars are wrong.
    In Microsoft Excel, DATE, EOMONTH, WEEKDAY functions return an incorrect result between Monday, January 1, 1900 and Wednesday, February 28, 1900.
    See this page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214326/en-us/
    Microsoft Excel incorrectly assumes that the year 1900 is a leap year in all Excel versions.
    That's the reason why our calendar versions only work from March, 1, 1900 until December, 31, 9999.
    Your comments are welcome.
    Pedro.

  12. Chandoo says:

    @Pedro.. Thanks for pointing that out. wow... This reminds me of the Joel Spolsky's first BillG review - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html (read it, I am sure you would love it.) when Bill out of blue asks about date time implementations for VBA (which Joel is the program manager for...)

    Thanks for sharing the URL too... Here is a specially made, chocolate sprinkled, extra fluffy donut for you 🙂

  13. Pedro says:

    Hi Chandoo, thanks a lot for the donut but I prefer it without chocolate!

    Always it's good to know a little history of Excel.
    The Joel Spolsky’s last BillG Excel review was about the "Hall of Tortured Souls"
    (See this Excel 95 Easter Egg here: http://www.eeggs.com/items/719.html)

    Do not miss the humor!

  14. Pedro says:

    @Chandoo.. I just return with a new calendar version.
    http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/calendar-pedrowave.xltx

    It helped me to practice conditional formatting, formulas to show check boxes, data validation drop down list, find out Thanksgiving Day's date for any year, how to find dates of public holidays using Excel, all reading your wonderful posts!

  15. Pedro says:

    Perpetual Calendar Spanish version starting weeks on Monday:
    http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/calendario-pedrowave.xltx
    Main characteristics:
    - Not macros.
    - Select a year from 1900 to 9999 with a dropdown listbox.
    - All date fields with the real date format.
    - Easy language change of day of the week and month names because are also dates.
    - Hide Saturdays and/or Sundays.
    - Week starting on Sunday or Monday.
    - Week and month numbers.
    - Hyperlink between sheets.
    - Consistent colors to Holidays, Diary and Events dates.
    - Easy change of Holidays by country.
    - Include 80 World Days and you can add more.
    - A diary with my birthday and 50 more programable appointments.
    - Check box to hide individual dates or all.
    - Holidays, diary and events text are showed on each month's sheet.
    - Ranges defined with Name Manager variables.
    I'll appreciate if you make me some suggestions to improve this calendar.
    Pedro.

  16. Joco1114 says:

    Please, I need help!
    I like all calendar from Pedro, thank you for them. Let me show my problem:

    I have 2 excel cells (for example AE12 and AE13) which mean the starting and the ending date of my duty. I need a macro to insert sheets with label YEAR. MONTH (for example 2010. August or similar) with the proper datas between the two dates. Is it possible?

    Thank you for reading me and sorry about my terribel english! 🙂

  17. Peter says:

    Hello Pedro,

    Thanks so much for the modified calendar template. I love the extra functionality you added. Is there any way you could upload an unlocked version? I wanted to change some of the comments and data validation so I could use it for one of my applications.

    As for feedback on potential improvements, with all the additions you made the file runs pretty slow. I'm sure this has to do with all the interconnectivity between the various tabs, but if there is a way to use less memory via more efficient formulas or something else I think this would make it easier to use. I have a brand new computer and with it running alone the response was pretty slow. One of the changes I'm making is changing the order of the months to match my company's fiscal year, so maybe something to automate a change like that could be useful.

    Cheers,

    Peter

  18. Pedro Wave says:

    Peter, my calendars are unlocked but you need Excel 2007 and 2010 versions to open them.

    Now I return with a new Programmable Task Calendar:
    http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.office.live.com/view.aspx/.Public/Calendario%20de%20Tareas.xlsx

    Wath an introductory video here:
    http://pedrowave.blogspot.com/2010/10/programmable-task-calendar.html

    This new calendar allows to select the start month to match the school and fiscal year.

  19. ASA says:

    This is great stuff Chandoo and company

    Wanted to know if someone had built something similar

    I need to store one Excel Sheet on this calendar that has all the holidays

    US Holidays appear in RED
    UK Holidays appear in Blue
    Meetings appear in Green
    Submissions appear in Orange

    Is there a way I can store the list in a separate worksheet and all the calendars get updated with this?

    Thanks

  20. divya says:

    please tell me "how to convert Rs.10000/- in to words through excel formula

  21. [...] is all! http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/12/11/2010-calendar-excel-template-downloads/ See more Templates at http://www.vertex42.com/ Share this:Like this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]

  22. Kerisa says:

    Greetings,

    Thanks for this wonderful excel vacation tracker. I notice that the tracker only has three months November, December and January 2015, however, I would like to add the other ten months for 2014. Can you please instruct me on how I can add the other months?
    Thanking you in advance.

  23. kanu bhatia says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    Calendar: can this be printed as single sheet 8.5x11 inch per month
    kanu

  24. Rahul says:

    WOW! I just searching some of like this, that help me.
    Thank you for sharing.

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