Quick Gantt Chart in Excel
Gantt charts are great for visualizing and presenting your project plan. Excel doesn't have a built-in Gantt chart (yet), but you could create one using different approaches:
- You can use an Excel chart.
- Use conditional formatting and format cells to look like bars.
- Use symbols and the repeat function to get the bars for the Gantt Chart.
In this post, I'll show you 2 different versions of method 1. If you don't have time to watch the videos and would rather get the written instructions, click here.
Method 1: Quick Gantt chart to visualize your project timeline
This is a super quick approach. It works well when you're coming up with your project time-plan but haven't actually started the project. It's for cases when you need to quickly present your timeline in a meeting so that your team can visualize the time each task will take. Watch the video here:
Method 2: Fully Featured Gantt Chart
This Gantt Chart can do two more things that the previous one couldn't:
- Show the percentage completion. The bars will be conditionally formatted depending on how much of the task is completed.
- Compare the Original time plan to the Actual time plan. This allows you to keep track of how you make changes once the project takes off.
Watch the steps in this video:
This takes a bit longer to setup, but once you have it - you can re-use it as a template for your other projects. Alternatively, feel free to download the template from my site.