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Excel is a powerful tool for managing projects, but there’s one key feature it lacks: a built-in Gantt chart. This can be frustrating for project managers who rely on Gantt charts to visualize timelines, track progress, and manage tasks. Despite this, with a few simple steps, Excel can be transformed into an effective Gantt chart tool.
What Is a Gantt Chart (and Why Should You Use It)?
A Gantt chart is a commonly usedproject management toolthat displays tasks as horizontal bars on a timeline. The bars represent the start and end dates of each task, allowing you to see a project’s entire schedule at a glance.
You should consider using a Gantt chart when you need a detailed visual representation of your project’s schedule. Instances where you can use them include tracking deadlines, milestones, and task dependencies in a large project; coordinating all the moving parts when planning an event; or scheduling project phases when doing a construction project or home renovation.
One of the most important uses of a Gantt chart is to highlight overlapping tasks and bottlenecks in a project and then take corrective action.
How to Create a Gantt Chart in Excel
Excel doesn’t have an option to insert a Gantt chart, meaning you will have to create one using a modified stacked bar chart. Don’t worry—it’s not as hard as it sounds.
Prepare Your Data
We are going to use the data below to construct our Gantt chart. It is a simple table with tasks, start days, and the duration of each task (in days).
Start Date
Duration (Days)
Venue Booking
Invitations
15-06-2025
Decorations
15-06-2025
Final Preparations
10-07-2025
12-08-2025
Here is a screenshot of what it looks like in Excel.
Insert Stacked Bar Chart
To insert a stacked bar chart, start by selecting theInserttab in the top menu. Then, clickInsert Column or Bar Chartin theChartssection and selectStacked Barin the2-D Barsection of the menu. you may also select3-D Stacked Barin the3-D Barsection.
Select Your Data
Now, we need to select the data that goes into the chart. Right-click the stacked bar chart and clickSelect Datain the menu.
Next, click theAddbutton in theLegend Entries (Series)section.
Click the text box underSeries name, then click theStart Dateheader in the sheet. Next, click in the text box belowSeries valuesand delete what’s there so it’s blank. Then, select all the dates and clickOKto insert them into the chart.
Back in theSelect Data Sourcedialog box, click theAddbutton again. Then, select theDuration (Days)header in the sheet forSeries name. For theSeries valuestext box, select all the days below that heading.
Next to theLegend Entries (Series)section in theSelect Data Sourcedialog box, you will see theHorizontal (Category) Axis Labelssection. Click theEditbutton.
In the dialog box that appears, click the text box, select all the tasks under theTaskheader in the sheet, and clickOK.
ClickOKto close theSelect Data Sourcedialog box.
You will notice that the tasks are in reverse order. We can quickly rectify this by right-clicking them in the chart and selectingFormat Axis.
In theFormat Axispanel on the right, tick theCategories in reverse ordercheckbox—it’s below theAxis positionsection.
That should reverse the tasks and put them in the right order.
Format the Graph into a Gantt Chart
Our Gantt chart is coming along nicely. To complete it, we need to do a little formatting. First, let’s get rid of those blue bars.
To do that, right-click them and selectFormat Data Seriesin the menu. In the panel on the right, select theFill & Linetab and click theNo fillradio button in theFillsection.
Now we have something that greatly resembles a Gantt chart.
The final touch is to remove the dates giving us that extra padding on the left. We will do this by setting the minimum bounds of that series to the start date of the planning phase, which is11/1/2024.
The problem is that the minimum bounds are represented by a number, and the dates here are using theShort Dateformat. Luckily, Excel allows us to easilyconvert dates into their numerical values.
To do this, switch to theHometab in the top menu and select the first date under theStart Date. Next, click the dropdown arrow next toDatein theNumbergroup of the ribbon and selectNumberin the menu.
The date should now be converted into a number that we can use as the minimum bounds for the dates.
Copy the number, right-click the dates in the chart (they will have also been converted to numbers), and selectFormat Axis. In theFormat Axispanel on the right, paste the number in the text box next toMinimumin theBoundssection.
Now those extra dates should disappear, and your Gantt chart should be complete.
With a little bit of formatting, you’re able to get the Gantt chart to look more visually appealing. You can, for example, change the chart colors or addaxis titles to the Excel chart. But if you don’t want to create one from scratch, there are manyGantt chart templates for Excelthat you can download and tweak to suit your needs.
