Today, I'm going to show you how to create a basic Gantt
chart in Excel 2016.
Gantt charts are a great way to get a bird's eye
view of your entire project.
At the end of this video, I'll also
show you an alternative that might be a little bit easier
for you.
But first, here's how to do it in Excel 2016.
If this video helps you out, we'd
love it if you hit that Thumbs Up button.
While I'll be walking you through all the steps you'll
need to create your own customized Gantt chart,
we've also created a template that's
also set up and ready for you to use.
Click the link in the description
to download the template and get started right away.
The first thing we need to do is get our worksheet set up.
We'll need columns for Task Name, Start Date, End Date,
and Duration.
The Task Name column should be formatted as text.
Start Date and End Date should be
formatted as a date in whatever local date format you prefer.
And the Duration should be formatted as a number.
The easiest thing to do is have the Duration field calculate
the appropriate duration of the task based on the start and end
dates.
This is a simple formula.
We'll start in cell E2.
The formula is D2 minus C2.
That will give us our calculation
and in turn create the task bars for us in the Gantt chart.
Now, rather than manually typing that formula
in for all the remaining cells in the Duration column,
just highlight the cell and hit Command C on a Mac,
or Control C on the PC, to copy the formula.
Use the Down arrow to move down a cell.
And hit Command V or Control V to paste.
Repeat the process for as many rows
as you need in your project.
Now it's time for the chart.
The chart we're looking for is the stacked bar chart.
You can find it under the Insert menu.
Insert the chart anywhere in the worksheet.
Then Right click.
And choose Select Data.
I'm working on a Mac.
But the process should be the same on a PC,
though the actual screens may look a little bit different.
Click the Plus under the Legend entry section
to add the first data set.
We're going to bring the start dates in first,
so name it Start Date.
And then click inside the y values field.
Now select the data in the Start Dates column.
Now we'll add a second entry for duration
and select the Duration column.
That gets most of the data into the chart.
But there's still one more step in this window.
Click the Select Data Source button in the horizontal axis
labels field.
Then select the entire task column.
One last thing here, make sure the Show data in hidden rows
and columns checkbox is ticked so your chart will still
work if you decide to hide any of the columns
or rows in the worksheet.
Now we have all of our data in the chart.
Let's make this a little bit bigger
so we can see what's going on.
It's starting to look something like a Gantt chart,
but it's not quite there yet.
The first thing you may notice is the dates
in the horizontal axis aren't actually dates,
at least not to us.
They are to Excel.
We just need to get Excel to translate them for us.
Our chart also covers much more time than we need.
Let's get rid of that extra time first.
The first task in the project starts on 7/25/16.
25 So there's no need for a project
to show anything before that.
Let's copy 7/25/16 into a cell down here
and format that cell as a number rather than a date.
Excel stores dates as numbers.
And you can see that 7/25/16 translates to 42576.00.
Now highlight the horizontal axis.
Right click.
And select Format axis.
Under Bounds, there are fields for minimum and maximum.
These are the first and last dates in the chart.
If we change the minimum value to 42576.00 and hit Enter,
all that extra time will disappear from the beginning
of our chart.
We still don't have readable dates though.
To fix that, go down to Number and change the category
from Number to Date.
Now the horizontal axis will show us readable dates.
There's still a problem though.
All of our tasks are in reverse order.
To fix it, highlight the vertical axis, right click,
and choose Format Axis.
Tick the categories in Reverse order checkbox,
and there you go.
This also moves the date axis to the top of our chart
where it's a little more useful for us.
Now, we're pretty close, but there's still
a couple things left to make this look like a real Gantt
chart.
First, let's get rid of the blue bars
that precede our task dates.
Click on one of the blue bars to select all of them.
Then go over to the Paint Bucket,
expand the Fill section, and select No Fill.
Now it looks like a Gantt chart, though not a very nice
looking one.
Here comes some movie magic.
Now I'll show you how I changed those taskbar colors.
Just click on a single bar twice.
Don't actually double click it.
Just click once to highlight all the bars in that color.
And then click it again to highlight just that bar.
Go over to the Paint Bucket and choose the color
you want from the fill options.
And there you have it, a simple Gantt chart in Excel.
Now there aren't any robust features here, no dependencies,
milestones, or resource management.
There's no visual information about the completeness
of a task.
It's cumbersome to move tasks around.
And if your project gets much larger than this,
they can get pretty unwieldy.
But it is a solution for small projects
that won't need to be updated very
often or by multiple project managers or stakeholders.
If you think you might be interested in something that's
more powerful and really easy to use,
I'd like to show you one more thing.
But first, if you're enjoying this video,
it would really help us out if you went ahead and hit
that Thumbs Up button.
And while you're doing that, subscribe to our channel
so you don't miss any of our videos.
Also, don't forget to download your free Gantt chart Excel
template from the link in the description of this video.
The template includes three sheets, all with pre-made Gantt
chart templates.
The templates we made for you are really great,
but if you think you might want a more powerful and even easier
to use solution for your projects, try TeamGantt.
TeamGantt is a web-based project scheduling tool
that makes creating your project plan as simple
as drag and drop.
As a comparison, I'll create a similar project
to the one we just made, only this time I'll use TeamGantt.
First, I'll create the tasks by clicking Add Task.
Then just hit Enter and create the next task.
You can even create groups for tasks, which can really
help keep you organized.
Once I have all my tasks organized how I want,
I'll just drag the task bars out for as long
as each task should take.
You can also add dependencies to make
sure each task gets pushed back in the event a preceding task
takes longer than expected.
I also have some coworkers already
invited to this project, so I'll go ahead and assign
some of these tasks to them.
They'll be notified by email that they've
been assigned some new tasks.
As progress is made, it's super easy
to update the percent complete of a task
so everyone on the team knows how things are going.
You can also see at a glance how busy
the team is so you know whether you
can assign more tasks to them.
As timelines change, tasks can be
updated by simply dragging the task bar
to make it longer or shorter.
Or you can just move the whole thing if necessary.
You can even leave comments and upload files
to tasks or the main project.
TeamGantt makes it incredibly easy for project managers
and non-project managers alike to plan, schedule, organize,
and share their projects.
To try TeamGantt for free, go to teamgantt.com/signup.
I hope you'll give TeamGantt a try.
And don't forget to like this video
and subscribe to our channel for more great content.
Thanks for watching.