Simple Project Planning With Excel Gantt Chart

Simple Project Planning With Excel Gantt Chart

If you’re building a new city, or plotting world domination, you’ll need a powerful project management tool, such as Microsoft Project.

For smaller projects, you can list your tasks in Excel, and create a Gantt chart, to show the timeline. Here’s how you can do simple project planning with Excel Gantt chart – watch the video and there are written steps too.

List the Project Tasks

In this example, we’re creating the company budget for next year. The first step is to list all the tasks on an Excel worksheet. The starting date for the first task is entered in column B, and the estimated days for each task is entered in column C.

Then, in cell B3, the WORKDAY function is used to calculate the starting date for the second task. It calculates the date based on the start date of the previous task, the number of days for the previous task, and the days in the list of holidays, on a different worksheet.

=WORKDAY(B2,C2,HolidayList)

GanttChart01

Create the Gantt Chart

To create a Gantt chart, select cells A1:C8, and insert a stacked Bar chart.

Then, format the Start Date series with no fill colour, and remove the chart legend.

GanttChart02b

Change Categories Order

The list of tasks will be in reverse order in the chart, so you can format the axis, to change the order.

Remove the check mark for the Categories in reverse order setting.

Turn off option to show Categories in reverse order
Turn off option to show Categories in reverse order

Adjust Minimum Setting

The minimum date on the axis is automatically set, and you can adjust it, to reduce the gap between the axis and the first task.

GanttChart04

Adjust Gap Width

Finally, to make the bars taller, adjust the gap width, to zero or a very low percentage.

The finished chart will show the timeline for the project tasks.

GanttChart05

Download the Sample Gantt Chart File

To see the task list and Gantt chart, and test the WORKDAY formula, you can download the sample Excel Gantt chart workbook.

The file is in Excel 2007 format, and is zipped. There are no macros in the file.

Go to the Excel Sample Files page on the Contextures website. In the Charts and Graphics section, look for CH0004 – Gantt Chart.

Watch the Gantt Chart Video

To see the steps for creating the WORKDAY formula and Gantt chart, you can watch this short Excel video tutorial.

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7 thoughts on “Simple Project Planning With Excel Gantt Chart”

  1. Thanks for this posting. I often get asked why anyone would build a Gantt chart in Excel when it’s so easy to do in Microsoft Project? My response is a) not everyone has Microsoft Project on their PC and b) not everyone is comfortable using Microsoft Project but are comfortable working in Excel.

  2. Great tutorial, you can also reverse the category order so that the date appears at the top of the Gantt chart.

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