Excel Magic 9: Building a Project Tracking “Gantt” Chart

Trace history of the gantt chart, a bar chart illustrating the project schedule, invented in the nineteen hundreds and named after its inventor Harry Kent, showing progress for each task.

Explore how to create a Gantt chart in Excel using templates, including a simple chart and agile chart, with activity names, start dates, durations, progress, assignments, and weekly views.

Learn to build a customized Gantt chart for project tracking, weighing skin templates against a from-scratch approach. Elevate your Excel skills by tailoring start, duration, progress, and milestones.

Explore three gantt chart types in this course, from a basic chart with tasks and start/end durations to an advanced chart and a pure chart with plans, dates, and progress.

Refresh essential Excel formulas and functions, including rundown, round, run up, and run down, and use logical formulas such as if to handle multiple conditions for charts.

Master color-based conditional formatting in Excel by creating single-element rules, highlighting values below 32 degrees Fahrenheit and above 30, with blue and green colors and rule precedence.

Master overlapping conditional formatting in Excel by stacking color, pattern, and borders with stop if true, applying 50 percent gray to values between 30 and 40.

Learn to create dropdown lists via data validation in Excel to minimize data-entry errors. The demo shows using a list and a named range for reliable task selection.

In Excel, use calendar formulas like today and weekday to show today's date, extract day numbers, and adjust week starts (Sunday or Monday) for chart labeling.

Build a gantt chart in Excel by listing tasks, assigning owners, and setting start dates and durations to compute end dates; use conditional formatting to highlight the active date range.

Apply conditional formatting to display Gantt bars in a project chart by using a formula that formats cells when current day falls between start and end dates.

Master an advanced Gantt chart in Excel by tracking start, end, actual dates, progress, and dependencies with conditional formatting for overlap and a today's date formula.

Explore advanced gantt chart techniques in excel, including setting planned and project start dates, durations, progress, actual start/end, and dynamic week scrolling with weekdays and conditional formatting.

Set up conditional formatting to visualize planned vs actual duration and progress in a Gantt chart, using formulas, references, and color rules (green completed, blue unfinished, gray patterns for plan).

Implement task dependencies in a Gantt chart by adding a dependent task, data validation dropdowns, and formulas to start after predecessors, then highlight today with a conditional rule.

Master printing advanced Gantt charts in Excel by using page setup to fit to one page, adjust margins, and print to PDF.

Build a pure Excel Gantt chart by aligning plan start dates and durations with actual start and duration, and track progress to compute completed and remaining days.

Learn to build a pure Gantt chart in Excel using a stacked bar chart, reverse category order, and axis tweaks to show actual start and remaining durations.

Learn to overlay planned start and duration on a Gantt chart in Excel by duplicating charts, setting transparency, and aligning axes for a single, synchronized project timeline.

Explore building a Gantt chart entry workflow in Excel using the Office 365 form, enabling no-code data entry from a table via the Developer tab and Quick Access Toolbar.

Install and enable the tape picker Excel add-in, then use the calendar date picker to quickly select a start date by navigating months and choosing a day.

Learn to build a Gantt chart in Excel to track projects, using conditional formatting; create basic, advanced, and pure charts with tasks, assignees, start/end durations, progress, and dependencies.

Discover how to build an interactive, self-service Excel dashboard with cross-filterable slicers and timelines, plus a Q&A and ways to connect via LinkedIn, email, and website.