- In all areas of project organization, diagrams are vitally important
- Whether physical or virtual, with them we can classify all the information we have, obtaining detailed conclusions, with the necessary details to use them.
- In Excel there are different diagrams that we can execute. One of the most interesting is the Gantt
Diagrams are essential for the organization of any initiative, and not only when making mental maps on paper, but also when we take advantage of online tools to manage all our resources. For example, If you are managing your latest project taking advantage of the spreadsheets included in Office, knowing how to make a Gantt chart in Excel is very basic.which you have to learn as soon as possible.
Gantt charts are one of the essential instruments that anyone in charge of a business or project must rely on when using the Microsoft office suite. If you are new to the field, don’t worry. We are going to show you some of the ways you have to take advantage of this arrangement of the elements.
In fact, once you adapt to these diagrams and take advantage of them on a daily basis, you will find that you are saving large amounts of money on specific software for it, which is very expensive. And also a lot of valuable time.
But what is a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a chart that shows the schedule of a project, which in turn derives from a simple bar chart, its predecessor that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, being updated little by little until it is located as a modern version that in addition to schedule, it works for relationships and dependencies.
Starting from that base, you can create a basic Gantt chart in excel using stacked bar charts. If you have to go a little further, there are always the default templates, of course.
Use a stacked bar chart as a Gantt chart
With a stacked bar chart, which is one of Excel’s built-in chart types, you can quickly and easily display the status of a project that looks exactly like a Gantt chart, even though it isn’t.
It is important that before starting you make sure you have all the data you want to show in the graph, yes. you must contemplate the tasks of the project, the duration of each one of them, when they started and will end.
Selected all the data that will make up the diagram, go to the Insert tab, clicking on the Insert column or bar chart drop-down box, selecting Stacked bar below 2D or 3D, as desired. Choose a 2D or 3D stacked bar chart and, when it appears, make various adjustments that you consider necessary.
For example, you can change the order of the tasks on the vertical axis, so that they are viewed from top to bottom, not the other way around. Double-clicking on the vertical axis reverses the order, and the tasks will be sorted from first to last.
Now that you have a stacked bar chart that works like a basic Gantt chart, you can tinker with other settings if you want to, more aesthetically related, like modify text fonts or colors.
Otherwise, as you make changes to the data, the graph will automatically refresh.
We also advise you to save your homemade Gantt chart as a template for future reference.
Using a Gantt chart template in Excel, the other alternative
As we said before, the other option is to use an Excel diagram template that comes predefined. Thanks to it you can include more details of the project, such as responsible members, stages of the campaign, etc.
Microsoft 365 subscribers need to know that Excel offers a handful of Premium templates. You have to go to File, New, Office, and in Gantt Chart, choose one of the available templates.
If you’re not a Microsoft 365 subscriber you shouldn’t worry too much either, as Microsoft also provides several free Gantt chart templates, such as those created by Vertex42.com, to download from this link. Once you have downloaded and installed it, you must click on Enable editing to be able to use it without restrictions.
Have you been able to create your Gantt chart in Excel with the tricks we just taught you?
