Excel Gantt Chart

Here is an easy way of creating an Excel Gantt Chart which is pretty responsive and looks nice. It is actually a bar chart formatted to look like a Gantt Chart. Let’s see how it is done.

We need to have our data with a format like below. List your activities, start dates next to them and durations next to start dates. Most project plans will have this kind of data anyway. Do not add column title for activities for now.

Select whole table and insert a stacked bar chart. You can see the one I inserted below.

1. Now open format axis menu by double clicking on vertical axis. Put a tick on “Categories in reverse order” option under Axis Options.
2. Move to horizontal axis options. Change Label Position to “High”.
3. Change date format as dd/mm for horizontal axis.
4. Change minimum value for bounds for horizontal axis. For this dataset 41332 works for a minimum value. I found it by trial and error.
5. Change major unit for horizontal axis as 3 or 4. ,
6. Our Excel gantt chart should look like the one below at this stage.
7. Click on start date series (blue bars) and set fill color as “No Fill”. This will leave duration series alone on the chart.
8. Delete the legend .
9. Rest is all formatting. Here is the one I made (after some quick formatting):You can download this chart from here: Excel Gantt Chart