Comments on: How to make a Gantt chart in Excel

See how you can quickly make a simple Gantt chart in Excel, where you can download advanced Excel Gantt chart templates or utilize the online Project Management Gantt Chart generator. Continue reading →

Comments page 16. Total comments: 426

  1. I have been able to edit a Gannt template into a 2 year construction schedule that has as many as 200+ tasks in rows and dates are shown in columns. Conditional formatting highlights dates and progress of each task. I have frozen panes at cell I-10 to maintain tasks on the left and dates across the top.
    I have created a lookup cell where you can enter a date in that highlights the proposed start of a 3 week look-ahead schedule.

    My 1st issue is when I enter the date to begin my 3 week schedule; it will highlight the proper beginning date column as desired, but I have to manually scroll over to the highlighted column to view the date (potentially 500+ columns to the right). I want Excel to automatically scroll the highlighted start date column to the left; (within viewing area) beside column ‘H’.

    My 2nd issue is that I want to be able to print just the 3 week schedule and frozen panes starting on the highlighted column (basically print the same thing I see on the screen) and down to the bottom of active task rows (this could be as few as 10 and as many as 200 rows).
    I have been able to highlight the cells I want to print and use the “print Selection” printer option as an elementary work around, however I have been unsuccessful in accomplishing the dynamic print issue with the a function or command. I may not have the correct format or function. Is it possible to accomplish this and can you lead me in the right direction?
    Thanks!

  2. Good stuff here. Am on it let me see what I will come up with definitely its a gannt chart but I would really love it to resemble the tutor's.

  3. Madam,

    Thanks a lot for nice article with clear understanding,

    In addition it is requested to further inform about plotting in single line with different colours instead of steps (as above gantt steps) possible with excel chart commands (not with VBA codes).

  4. Thank you so much for this tutorial! But I see the milestones on the first image. Could you please describe how to add a few simple milestone to the same gantt chart?

  5. Completing a research proposal for my MSc and this made it easy and pretty straight forward to produce a timing plan. Thanks!!

  6. thanks for a clear explanation

  7. I tried setting up the date axis but couldn't select the "fixed" option under part 6.2. I'm using Excel for Mac.

    1. Hi Gregg,

      In Excel for Mac there are no Auto and Fixed radio buttons, so you simply type the number in the box.

  8. Brilliant article and I recreated the Gantt easily. How did you ever figure this out!

    Thanks for publishing this as I will be using this method quite regularly!

  9. Great works,

    i have query that i want make a gantt chart where i can track a multiple work done by person on Minute Scale.And Works are over lapping to each other in time frame.
    Please help
    Thanks in Advance

    1. Hello, Karan,

      Please try to count duration in minutes. Hope this helps.

  10. Wow!!! I am so glad I found your site; my gantt chart looks amazing. Thanks to you, I received many kudos. Thanks again Svetlana!

  11. Thanks. Can I add or mirror the dates to the top and bottom of the gantt chart?

  12. Very nice tutorial Svetlana!

    Thanks

    Stuart

  13. This is great, but would love to place a line onto the chart for critical path. I've tried adding an XY with lines, but Excel2013 keeps applying secondary axis and greys it out so you can't change. Any ideas ?

  14. How can I add a Milestone?

  15. BEST and easiest to follow instructions I found. Thank you!

  16. Very good tutorial. thanks you for sharing.
    1 question : I nee to display teh date format in a specific format : weekly YY-WW example 15W49

    I face issue as it seems that graph is based on serial number only...(excel 2010)

    Have you the trick to solve this?

  17. Hi

    I'm trying to get the months to show on the horizontal axis the entire month ie 1- 30 April in one block, with solid line at the start and at the end of the month, but instead solid line appears in the middle of the month.

    How do you fix this? I've tried formatting the axis.

    Thank you

  18. Hello, I have used this chart, but I have added the "workday" function with a list of holidays. How do I make the duration bar actually represent the true duration with weekends and holidays included?

  19. Is it possible to label the bars with task names in the gnatt chart above ? Thx.

    1. The task names are retrieved from the source data. As soon as you change the names in your worksheet, the Gantt chat will reflect the changes.

      1. I need to make a gantt chart for the process unavailability in my plant. The shift starts at 8am and ends at 8am on the next day. And there are some 10 process which have their individual break downs. How to make the chart using time as horizontal series?

  20. When using the Project Planner Template in Excel, can the periods be changed to dates? I've tried to change them via formatting and that is not an issue, however it pushes back all of the percentages complete (at least by a month) that I've already input. It also changes those from actual to beyond plan on my spreadsheet.

  21. Hi,
    Is it possible to display date and time on the Gantt chart? I have to display a schedule of classes that will take place over a period of 6 weeks.Each class is 1 hour long and there are total of 27 classes.
    Thanks

  22. Hello, I was following your step by steps, and I keep running into the same problem.. When I go to add duration to the data, it says that the chart is to complex and if I add the second set of data the first will be deleted.. I don't understand why. Any help would be great. Thanks

  23. Thanks for a great chart, it worked very well. The intructions made sense and were very clear. My question is, how do I add two set of dates for the same category? For example, "coding" and "system test" will occur again for a specified date and duration. How can I add those to the chart? I want to show that coding will occur for a week in May and also for a week in June, how could I show that? I haven't been able to figure that out.

  24. Can we generate a chart with unit as "months" instead of "days"?
    Ex: Start Date is 01-Jan-2015, End Date is 01-Feb-2015. So duration for me (in months) = 1.
    How to plot the graph using the unit as "Months".
    Please help.

  25. Hi,

    How can i incorporate the progress in % on the gantt chart?

    Thanks

  26. Thanks great tutorial

  27. As an event's student at University this website helped save my life! What could of been hours of stress making a Gantt chart was turned into a few minutes! #lifesaver Highly recommended!

  28. Thanks very much for this.

    How do you format the above step by step chart to also show things like percentage complete, plan start, actual start, etc.?

    Could you help with that?

  29. How do you get the percentages to display on the bars (like the screenshot at the very top of the page)?

    Also, this is a very nice tutorial. Thanks!

  30. Hi Svetlana,

    The gantt chart worked fine for me and what I needed it for.

    Thanks for the tips.

    Jim

  31. This is a great tutorial. Is there a way to change how the date axis displays? We are trying to plot out a timeline for a project but don't have actual dates yet. I would like to just be able to number the months instead.

    Thank you.

    1. Hi Karen,

      Yes, you can display the months. Please see my response to comment 2 above for the details and a screenshot.

  32. Hi Svetlana,

    This is a wonderful tutorial. I worked through it and in no time, I could prepare a decent Gantt chart. I am very grateful to you. Thanks.

    Cosmas

  33. Hi Ma'am,

    Thank you for extending your knowledge.
    May I ask if, is it possible to add percent (%) accomplishment on the bar chart? just like the example image above..

    Thanks

  34. Hi,
    Thanks for this information. I have a gantt chart set up in exactly the same way as you but I'm having problems with the results aligning with the dates (ie, in the format of Jan-15). I have the major and minor set as 31 and 6 but that doesn't help. Any ideas? It seems to be a problem with February being a shorter month.

    For example, for March, although the date for the bars on the chart being 01/03/2015, they are slightly appearing to the left of the March gridline, in the February section of the graphs.

    Any ideas greatly received!
    Many thanks,
    Sally

  35. my duration is not showing 'red' on my chart--I do have multilple tasks starting and ending at the same time--is that why? also, my first task start date is 1/13/2015, but the chart starts 12/7/2014...?

  36. I mean it is possible to make a gantt chart with a vertical and horizontal scroll bar? Big thanks..

  37. Hello Svetlana Cheusheva, I'm new in ms excel and i want to learn more, it possible to make a gantt chart with a vertical and horizontal bar in one chart(project timeline)? if possible can you make a tutorial of its?Big Thank you...

  38. Has anyone figured out how to adjust the "period selected" feature on the Gantt Chart?

  39. How to change the duration period as weeks in the chart?

  40. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Most helpful Gantt tutorial for Excel 2010 I was able to find anywhere.

  41. Hi Svetlana,

    Your tutorial is awesome and was very helpful!!! Thank you so much

  42. Hi just want to ask if it is possible to have the gantt chart show both the planned timeline and actual timeline in the same chart

  43. This is a fantastic tool! My boss loved it and I showed to my mom as well.Her group was looking for a Gantt project management tool. She showed to her boss and now it is the required template for all their projects going forward.

  44. I am sorry the example did not appear as I typed it. Apparently I had to many blank spaces. Here is another example. The G denotes grazing events.
    Field 1-GGGGGGG---------------------GGGGGGG---------------------GGGGGGG
    Field 2--------GGGGGGG---------------------GGGGGGG---------------------GGGGG
    Field 3---------------GGGGGGG---------------------GGGGGGG-------------------
    Field 4----------------------GGGGGGG---------------------GGGGGGG------------

    I hope this is useful.

  45. Hello,
    Thanks for the instructions. They were useful. However it does not do exactly what I want.
    I am trying to create a chart that shows a grazing schedule for a natural resource conservation project. I want to show the timing and duration of each event in a field. For example, say I have 4 pasture. They will be grazed in a sequential manner. The duration of each event will be 7 days. When the fourth pasture has been grazed the animals will return to the first pasture. I want it to look something like this.
    Field 1- xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx
    Field 2- xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx
    Field 3- xxxxxxx xxxxxxx
    Field 4- xxxxxxx xxxxxxx

    Do you have any tips on how this can be done easily? Unfortunately, I am limited to "approved" software. Therefore, it would be best if I can use Excel
    I appreciate any assistance you can provide.

  46. Madam Svetlana Cheusheva

    First of all thank you for sharing your Experience and Articles with all .The articles you share with the Screen shots is very helpfull to me in doing my work in excel .As of today(11-Jan-2015) when i was in need to know how to make drop down list in excel i google it i got ablebits site and im very happy i can find what all i want to do in excel with more foemating.

    Thanks

    Mohammed Shabbir Ali

  47. congratulations! you've got many followers bcoz of your gantt chart simple and practical explanations.My question no is How can i reflect percentage completion in the gantt chart that we just created. Thank you and more power!

  48. Excellent demonstration and great for people like me.

    Thanks for posting this

  49. Thank you so much for the instructions! They were really clear and easy to follow!

  50. Thanks a lot! its very easy to understand

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