Project Timeline with Excel Gantt Chart

http://contextures.com/excel-project-management-template.html
To create a timeline in Excel, you can list your tasks on the worksheet. Then, insert a stacked bar chart, and format the bar chart so it becomes a Gantt chart, showing the project timeline.

This video shows how to calculate the start date for each task, and create and format the Gantt chart to show the timeline.

'-----------------------
Transcript:

In this workbook I have a list of tasks for preparing our company budget I've put the start date for our first task and estimated how many days each of these steps will take us. On another sheet I have a list of the holidays and I've selected those cells and named that range HolidayList.

So, going back to our task list from this start date I'll be able to calculate all the start dates for the following tasks and then once those are all filled in we'll create a chart that shows the timeline.

So to figure out when this next task can start, I'm going to use the WORKDAY function. So type an equal sign and then WORKDAY and it's going to give us a date based on the starting date and then the workday that is ten days after that.

I'm pressing Tab to enter that function name then the start date is the date of the previous task, then a comma to do the next argument and the number of days is 10. So this one will be ten days after that previous task. Then a comma and our holidays -- if you have a holiday list you can use it -- or you can just leave this argument out if you don't have any holidays.

So I'm going to this list and it automatically puts in the name of that list. I'll close that formula and there's the date that the next task will start. Then I can fill that down to the last cell so we know that our last task will be starting on July 19th.

And now to create chart from this I'm going to select. I've left the heading of the task list blank. I'm going to select from that blank cell down to the last row of data and over to column C, to include the number of days.

So with those cells selected, I'll go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon. and I want to use a bar chart and the type will be the stacked bar. So that creates a list of our tasks, and the red portion is the task activity.

So we'll clean this chart up a bit so it looks better.

First of all, we can see that our task list here has been reversed in the chart. We also want to get rid of these blue bars which are really just placeholders to show when the tasks start.

To do that, we're going to click on one of these blue bars and then on the Ribbon we now have a Chart Tools heading and under that I'll go to Format. and for the shape fill I'll click No Fill. So those bars disappear.

We also can get rid of this logo because we're only going to have one item showing in the chart, which is the the days that that task runs. To get rid of the legend, I'll go to the Layout tab and under Legend click None.

Now to get this list back in the order that it is on the worksheet I'll click on those labels. I'm on the Layout tab still, I'll go to format selection Axis options. I want these categories in reverse order.

If we look at the chart they're now matching what's on the worksheet, but it's also put the dates at the top of the chart. To change that I'm going down to Horizontal axis crosses and put those at Maximum Category then click OK.

So now we can see that the chart has the tasks in the order that we want them and the dates are back at the bottom. We also have a lot of gap here between the axis and where the first tasks starts. So instead of letting Excel decide what the first date should be here, we've got about 20 days of empty space so we'll just get rid of those.

To do that I'll click on this axis at the bottom. And Format Selection so instead of letting the minimum be automatic we'll make it fixed. And we wanted to add 20 days to where it starts so there, there's just a small gap now, between the axis and the first task.

And to make these bars wider, so there is not as much gap between them, I'll select one of these bars, Format Selection and I'll put No Gap, or you could leave a very small gap between them. And so there is our task list and a timeline using a Gantt chart, created with the bar chart in Excel

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Excel
• Excel Gantt chart
• Gantt chart
• Gantt chart Excel
• Excel chart
• Excel Gantt
• Excel timeline
• Gantt
• Excel project management
• Excel Gantt timeline
• Contextures

[vb6code]

Interesting… But How it will be if I have Sequel for the same task?