How to Create a Gantt Chart in Excel in 10 Minutes! (FREE Download Included!)

in this video I'm going to show you how to create a Gantt chart in Excel the easy way the Gantt chart is such an easy tool to quickly visualize when tasks are due and how much progress has been made to follow along with this video and create your own Gantt chart in Excel download the exercise file completely for free over at Alvin thepm.com Gantt chart to create a Gantt chart all you need are three things the task and the plans start and plan completion dates now before we get started let's make sure that all the data in the cells are formatted correctly select the columns for d and e right click and choose the option to format the cells we want this data to be displayed as a date this formatting will be very helpful when we have to apply formulas and manipulate the data to create our graph all right so before we can create our Gantt chart let's first determine the duration in days for each of the tasks now to calculate the duration we'll be using the formula planned completion date minus the planned start date in our example here we want the number of full days because that way we can visualize how long the entire task will take so in cell C4 type in equal sign followed by cell E4 minus cell D4 and then hit enter select the cell and hover your mouse over the cells and bottom right corner until you see a plus symbol left click and hold your mouse button and drag it all the way to the bottom let's format the cells and let's realign them to the middle so that it looks more clean to the eye to create the Gan chart on our x-axis we'll be displaying the duration and the dates and on our y-axis we'll be displaying the test descriptions select any cell outside of your data table and press alt plus F1 this is the keyboard shortcut that I like to use to quickly create a graph let's zoom out so we can see the entire Excel chart and let's move the graph out of the way inside of the graph itself right click and choose the option for select data under the field for legend entries we want to select the plan start dates so first click add and for the series name let's leave it blank for now under series values select all the values for the planned start dates and then press enter press OK and now we'll want to do the same thing and add in the data for the durations now instead of showing our vertical bar chart we want the bars to be displayed horizontally so left click inside the graph right click to open up the menu and choose the option for change chart type on the left hand side choose bar and at the top select the icon that represents a stacked bar graph so here we can see the blue bars representing the planned start dates and the orange bars representing the duration let's hide the blue bars so it only shows the duration to do that select and left click one of the blue bars right click and Under The Fill button choose the option for no fill all right so our Gantt chart is starting to look a little bit better but the x-axis is showing that the dates are overlapping so we'll need to fix this to do that left click on one of the dates and right click to open up the menu and choose the option for format access in the right panel we see here that Excel has a minimum and a maximum limit for the dates however it shows us in a numeric format for minimum type in the earliest plan star date for your tasks for our example let's type in one slash two slash 2023 for the maximum limit type in the latest plan completion dates of all the tasks which in our case is 2 24 2023 after you press enter you'll see the x-axis titles format correctly after you do this you'll notice that the task IDs are displayed on the graph from bottom up instead of in the descending order fix that left click the y-axis and in the panel to the right check mark the box for categories in reverse order and now we can see all the tasks being displayed in descending order with the duration bars to the right hand side as a pro tip for my Gantt charts I like to display and not the task ID number itself but the actual task title so to make that change select the y-axis and right click to open up the menu and choose the option for select data in the right panel for horizontal access labels click on edit and highlight all the cells which correspond to the task titles by the way if you're getting a lot of value out of this video do me a favor and smash that like button it truly shows your support for me and it helps the channel out tremendously alright now let's delete the chart title and make the graph a little bit bigger so it's easier to see everything looks pretty good so far but let's change the color of all our bars to be a lighter blue color left click on one of the bars to select the graph right click to open up the menu and Under The Fill button choose the color for light blue now when you look at our table we actually have a two header task for phase one and phase two we want to color code these to be a different color than the subtasks to do that left click to select the graph left click again to select the bar itself right click to open up the menu and then fill in the color so it's dark blue to add in a progress bar for each task let's add in a column for days completed to do this we're going to use the formula percent completed multiplied by the actual duration to get the amount of actual days that were completed so in cell G4 type in equal sign followed by F4 multiplied by C4 and then hit enter let's drag this formula down all the way to the bottom to add in the progress bar we're going to use the error bars feature of our graph so let's left-click on one of the Hidden bars to the top right area of the graph click on the plus symbol to open up another menu and check mark the box for error bars left click on the right arrow button and choose more options on the panel to the right under Direction choose the option for plus and no cap under the section for error amount select custom and highlight the values underneath the column for days completed the error bars are hard to see so let's go to the bucket icon and let's change the width of the line to B10 and under the color option let's select a light green color add in the percent completion label callouts left click on one of the error bars and left click on the plus symbol which appears to the top right of the graph for data labels left click on the right arrow and select more options go to the tab with the three vertical bars and under the section for label contains select value from cells and highlight all the data that's underneath the column for percent completed once you do that press OK and uncheck the boxes for value and show leader lines delete the data columns to the right side and move around the percent completion labels to where the green bars are and there you have it the Gantt chart is such an easy tool to create an Excel to visualize your Project's progress and if you haven't done so already download the Gantt chart exercise file completely for free over at Alvin thepm.com Gantt chart to learn how to create a risk assessment Matrix in Excel watch this video next and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Alvin the PM - Become a Certified Project Manager

Views: 14,203

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Id: LIa-2LbYIdU

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 02 2023