2015 has been the most awesome year since starting Chandoo.org
Thank you so much for making it happen. This year, more than 11 million people visited our site (up 8%), learned something and took first step to become awesome in their work. 2015 has been an amazing journey, thanks to all your visits, listens, purchases, comments, likes and shares.
A big thanks to you, my dear reader, for supporting me and choosing chandoo.org as partner in your journey to awesomeness.
Apart from our readers, there are also countless people, websites, books, companies which helped me have a fantastic year. This message is my way of saying thanks to them.
People who helped me in 2015
Teachers & gurus:
Running a small business focusing on knowledge requires a lot of training, help and mentoring. Thanks to all these wonderful people who motivated me, taught me, inspired me and corrected me in this year.
Excel folks:
Hui, Jon Peltier, Debra Dalgleish, Mike Alexander, Dick Kuslieka, Rob Collie, Bill Jelen, Jordon Goldmeir, Colin Legg, Mike Girvin, Francis Hayes, & David Hager
Forum members:
Hui, Luke, Narayank, Somendra, Deepak, Debraj, Khalid, Nebu, Asheesh and more.
Business & entrepreneurship:
Pat Flynn, MrMoneyMustache, Tim Ferriss and Tropical MBA.
Health & fitness:
My cycling buddies – Hemanth, Srinivas B, Srinivas C, Sandeep, Sridhar V, Sridhar B and more.
Authors & books
It has been a powerful & inspiring journey, thanks to all the books I could read.
Some of the authors & their books that inspired me are,
- Andy Weir – The Martian
- George Mahood – Everyday is a holiday & Life is a beach
- Rob Collie & Bill Jelen – Power Pivot Alchemy
- Scott Adams – How to fail at everything and still win big
- Stephen King – On Writing
- Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett – Data Science for Business
Note: all the book links are Amazon Affiliate links. That means, if you click and purchase a book thru above links, I will get a few cents from Amazon.
Partners, Affiliates & Supporters
Chandoo.org is able to reach out & help millions of users world wide because it stands on the shoulders of many giants & supporters.
Our partners:
PASS BA & Jen Stirrup: Thank you so much for inviting me to speak at PASS BA 2015 conference. It was an awesome experience meeting all the Excel legends and PASS BA staff in Santa Clara this April.
Plum Solutions: Thank you Danielle for doing all the ground work to conduct another round of Excel & Power Pivot masterclasses in Australia in 2015. It was a great experience meeting our Australian readers & fans.
EduPristine: Thanks to Pawan, Paramdeep & rest of the staff at EduPristine for partnering with Chandoo.org in running Financial Modeling classes.
Our Affiliates:
This year was great for many of our affiliates too. Thanks to their support, we had more customers and they had more revenues. Some of our most prominent affiliates are,
Dashboard Spy, Francis, Daniel Ferry, Debra Dalgleish, Philip, Ken Puls, Oscar, Jimmy Pena, Victor Chan, Alan Murray, Brad Edgar and many more.
Customers & Readers
In 2015, more than 5,300 people purchased courses, templates, ebooks or products from Chandoo.org. More than 120,000 people are now members of our newsletter / RSS feed. More than 12,000 people regularly tune in to Chandoo.org podcast too. Many more people discover and join our little community every day. Thank you so much for inviting me to your life & letting me help you. My sincere & heart-felt thanks to each and every one of you.
Many thanks to Texas Mutual, University of Tasmania (Australia), Environmental Protection Agency – Ohio etc. for purchasing bulk licenses of our products.
I am also thankful to our Excel Forum members, who continue to share their knowledge & skills selflessly.
Special thanks also to,
- Delegates of my Advanced Excel & Power Pivot Masterclasses in Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane in Australia.
- Delegates of the PASS BA conference in Santa Clara, USA
- People who attended the meetups in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Thanks for spending a lovely evening with me talking about Excel 🙂
- Leonie, Sunil, Habiba, Matt, Susan, Kurt and Danielle for your love, hospitality and warmth during my Australia visit this summer.
- Rickard from Corality and Johann from ModelOff for taking a few minutes out of their schedules to meet me and share a drink.
- Dan Fylstra for sharing his views and insights about Excel in a podcast interview.
- Staff and editors at Apress who helped Jordan & me with our book – Dashboards for Excel.
- Jeff Weir for all his wisdom, time & advice.
- All Excel MVPs and bloggers who attended the PASS BA conference and made it a memorable experience for me. (here is more)
- All our podcast listeners
- Everyone who bought a copy of The VLOOKUP Book or Dashboards for Excel.
- Mixergy, PC Magazine, InvestinTech for all press coverage and love.
Our staff
Chandoo.org staff are the silent soldiers helping me achieve our mission – “to make you awesome in Excel”. I am deeply thankful to their efforts & work ethic.
- Ravindra: for handling student enrollments, customer support & email work
- Joya: for creating podcast transcripts
- Pothi: for maintaining Chandoo.org webservers and helping our site run smoothly
- Narayan: for answering student questions & doubts
- Chittibadrayya: for taking care of our accounting & financial reporting stuff
- Jo (my wife): for helping me with customer support emails.
Companies & websites that helped me
I am thankful to Microsoft for creating Excel and helping me make a living out of it.
I am also thankful to,
Email & Productivity: Google, iPhone
Website, Hosting & E-commerce: WordPress, GoDaddy, Wishlist Member, KnownHost, Amazon, PayPal, E-Junkie, 2Checkout, EBS, GumRoad, FastSpring, Thesis, libsyn
Community & Connection: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Skydrive, pinterest
Software: Paint.NET, Mozy, Notepad ++, Camtasia & Snagit, Skype, Rescue Time, Audacity
Apps: Flipboard, Feedly, Amazon Kindle
There are many other software, companies and websites that help me every day. I am really thankful to each and every one of these. Detailed listing here.
Last but not least…
I am able to perform at my best levels & help you because there is someone else that support, encourage and inspire me every day.
- My family: Jo & kids support me and Chandoo.org in numerous ways. They shower me with love, humor and support everyday so that I can be awesome at what I do.
- All my close friends & relatives: for supporting me & encouraging me to do better.
PS… something for you:
Here is a nice little surprise for you. Open a new Excel 2013 or above file & in A1 type
=BASE(PRODUCT(5,7,83)&REPT(3,2)&REPT(6,2),6^2) &" "&BASE(2^15-2424,3*12)&" "&BASE(PRODUCT(19,1877,5,3,3),4*9)
for older versions of Excel (2010 or prior):
=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(8,10^2*2+3^2,4)& "P"&ADDRESS(2^2,21^2,2^2)& ADDRESS(16/4,SUBSTITUTE(1517,15,96),4) &"Y"&ADDRESS(2*4,2424+1000,2*2),8,""),4," ")
13 Responses to “Gantt Box Chart Tutorial & Template – Download and Try today”
Hi Chandoo
As one of your students I have followed your detailed example through with great success. However, Excel is acting in an unexpected way and I wonder if you could take a look?
http://cid-95d070c79aef808e.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Gantt%20Box%20Chart.xlsm
On my version, I have to type 40239 (Which equates to 2 Mar 2010) to get the chart to display 31 May 2010 (which should be 40329)!!??
Have I done something wrong or is Excel acting up?
Thx
Oli
PS Your example file in 2007 displays correctly.
Hi,
I like this idea a lot, but I agree the name is a little drab.
As an American I may just be seeing things, but to me the combination of lines and bars on your chart looks like a bunch of cricket bats.
Maybe you could work that into a catchier name. 🙂
Cheers!
Here is some code I use to keep the axis synched.
It may be useful to some of your readers
It is based on a comment I saw on Daily Dose of Excel.
Function SynchGanttAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
'Sets the X min and X max for Category axis
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
'
'Top Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlCategory, 1)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
'Bottom Horizontal Axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 2)
.MinimumScale = lower
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
Function SynchVerticalAxis(Cname, lower, upper)
Application.Volatile
On Error Resume Next
' Excel 2007 only
'Right hand vertical axis
With ActiveSheet.Shapes(Cname).Chart.Axes(xlValue, 1)
.MinimumScale = 0
.MaximumScale = upper
End With
End Function
@Oli.. Can you check your file again.. I see 40329...
@Dave: Even I saw things.. the bars actually looked like lollipops. How about calling this lollipop chart - now that would be yummy and goes along the tradition of naming charts after eatables (bar, pie, donut...)
@Bob: Superb stuff... thanks for sharing 🙂
Hi Chandoo
This looks really good and I think it can also be applied to show project phases / milestones.
Question: Thinking further could this be amended to display a project lifecycle (Idea through to Implementation say 7 phases) on one bar / row? Just imagine 20 projects within a programme all on one chart one bar each showing their respective lifecycle stages i.e. on one page.
Idea: As the Gantt Box Chart this is quite intensive to set up re formatting etc how about the added extra of once you have completed this to "Save as template" i.e. saves the formatting and layout of the chart as a template so you can apply to future charts. Simple to do and will save the time formatting etc again and again and again.
Therefore tip: Click on your chart demo and then click on Save As template icon (2007) - edit file name and click on save. Ready to use / apply via Templates in Change Chart Type window.
Thanks and be very interested if the lifecycle question can be resolved
Mike
How embarrassing.
I was obviously suffering from numerical dyslexia. I was one of those days.
@Mike H: You can easily make this chart to work like a generic project lifecycle plan chart. All you have to do is,
1. in a separate sheet define the steps of lifecycle and various dates in a table (with 5 columns for each of the projects you have).
2. now use a control cell to input the project name you want to show in the chart
3. based on the input, use OFFSET Formulas to get the correct data
4. Rest is same as the tutorial above
For more info on the dynamic charting visit http://chandoo.org/wp/tag/dynamic-charts/ and http://chandoo.org/wp?s=OFFSET
Your solution is really smart but in the en Excel isn't meant to do stuff like this. I, as a former PM, always thought is was frustrating that you had to do stuff like this for something simple like a Gantt chart. So I built Tom's Planner. And would like to plug it here. I think it really solves the problem you are trying to solve in the most efficient way. Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com for a free account or play around with the demo.
Hi there,
Chandoo - this is really a very nice and helpfull chart - I adopted it, so I can report a forecast or the delay of a certain task (coming from my role as an auditor for projects).
One topic I´m currently struggeling with: I do have a project lasting for lets say 12 month. For a management reporting, I want to have kind of snapshot, lets say one month back and 2 month in the future. I tried with the offset formula, but failed. Any idea?
Thx
Lopi
[...] Ein viel geliebter Klassiker ist die Erstellung von GANTT-Diagrammen mit Excel. Wir hatten das Thema wiederholt schon hier. Chandoo.org hat sich mal wieder mit einer neuen Variante hervorgetan: Das GANTT-Box-Chart. [...]
[...] [...]
Hi Chandoo - fantastic xls. One thing I can't figure out how to do is adjust the alignment of the vertical axis. I would like to left align so that I could indent to represent sub tasks. Can that be done? Or is there a better way?
I've been trying to work out if there's a way to show weekends on the graph. The closest thing I've got is to add them on a secondary axis, but then I haven't been able to keep both axis lined up together! Any ideas?
Following on from this - is it possible to show things like holidays?