Creating a Gantt chart using the project timeline template available in Excel: Gantt chart can be created using the template readily available in Excel provided by Microsoft.
This project timeline isn't as difficult to create as you might think. There are multiple layouts for timelines in Excel, and this article shows you how to create them. Right click on that point and select Format Data Series from the dropdown menu. Go to the Error Bar Options in the sidebar (the chart icon). (906) 227-2468 Time to get our timeline looking like an actual timeline. Keep the Y error bars selected and go to the Fill & Line option on the sidebar. This is where we start to get the information from the data table into something like a timeline.

This guide is for Excel 2016 on Windows, but the steps are similar for other versions of Excel, including on Mac.

Bold or Italicize the label if you like, to make it stand out.

Select a data point then click again so it is the only one selected. Manually type the dates in and do the math in your head for the start date. With the Format Error Bars sidebar still open, select the dropdown arrow on Error Bar Options. Timeline Chart – Free Template Download Download our free Timeline Chart Template for Excel.

If there’s a line, do the same on the Line Options. When the Select Data Source dialog is ready to go it looks like this: The chart is now populated with some data.

In this step we’ll add that row onto the timeline as a line marking today’s date.

In Excel 2007 and 2010, click the timeline chart to activate the Chart Tools, and then click the Design > Save As Template. For the Y series select G6:G14 – this is the “Position” column. If you want, you can then change individual markers. With the data series still selected, go to the top left Add Chart Element, Error Bars, More Error Bar Options. With a bit of time, you can set up this timeline as a template for reuse in all of your projects.

In the first row there is an action called Today. Perfectly set out for day to day work. I find 3pt or 4pt works well.

So, you need a high-level summary of the main actions and events that need to happen to make the project a success. With the just added series selected, go to the Marker options on the sidebar. Change the Direction of the bars to "Minus" and the End Style to "No Cap". Select the title on the chart and update it to something more meaningful. Now we need to add the cell references for the chart. Set the Direction as "Plus" and the End Style is "No Cap". Next, we’ll add the description of the actions and events to the chart as data labels. So far, we haven’t used it.

Now onto the chart…. Select the chart and on the Chart Tools, Design, click Select Data. Then select Direction as “Plus” and End Style as “No Cap”. Definitely not designed for slides in a meeting with management – you won’t be able to read the text in the back row, probably not even in the front row.

Select the first scatter type in the menu.

Step 1: Create a data table of the key actions / events First of all, create a very simple data table with the high-level actions and events that you want to track on the timeline. To create a timeline chart in Excel… Every time I present this timeline, I can manually update the color of these milestone markers. To change this… remember the Position column in the data table? Go to Data Labels and select the Left aligned labels.
- Formatting Word Mail Merge Values in Excel, Allowing Third Party Applications to Install on a MacBook, In the left pane of the new window, select the.

helpdesk@nmu.edu Northern Michigan University is an equal opportunity institution. The length is equal to the duration of the task. The final project timeline in Excel: For the formatting of the overall chart, I’ve gone for a light blue background but make it stand out for presenting.

Very similar set up as before so this should be starting to sound very familiar…. This one doesn’t join data points with any lines. We will add this as a separate series later. Right click and select Format Data Point. It won’t look polished immediately, so don’t worry – we’ll work on formatting in a later step. Change the color if you want but I’m keeping the default grey. This is the chart used to track all the stages of a project in a visual way. This afternoon...”. “Can I get an overview of the new reporting project? I’m sticking with the default blue in my version.

This is the Planned Duration column.

I’m going to change the color to red and thicken to 3pts.

And there you have it. You might remember that the first row in the data table was for an event called Today. Click on the Start button and select Excel to have a new Excel … If you prefer written instructions, then continue reading. Example #2. Don’t worry, we’re going to fix it. Under Marker Options select Built In and change the type to diamond (or use whatever you prefer – no hard and fast rule so play around with different styles).

To make them look a little more polished, select the bars, go to the Fill & Line menu on the right. We want to remove those as well. These aren’t set in stone; you can change names and add fields as needed. The X value is the Start Date in C5 and the Y value is the Position in G5.

Select the label twice and then type = and then select the cell C5.

Click again on the same data label and only that data label will be selected. Excel offers many tools and charts, timelines being one class of these. The Series Name is cell F4 – the column headed “Completed”, The X values are C6:C14 – the “Start Dates”. You’ll notice that there are some Y error bars displaying on this data series. Leave Negative Error Value as it is (it won’t display on the timeline).

Change the Direction to "Minus" and the End Style to "No Cap". With the error bars still selected, go to the Fill & Line and change the color. To create a timeline chart in Excel, take the following steps: 1. To begin with, click on any data point in the chart to select the whole series. A project timeline overview is more useful when we can see the progress against the planned duration. I’m going to do this for my key milestones (i.e.

On Error Bar Options there’s a dropdown arrow.

Across from Fieras. Something you can easily update (this won’t be the only review) and looks good enough to put on a slide. It still doesn’t look like a proper project timeline as we’re missing any indication of how long the actions should take. Note: if the text pane is not visible, you can click the small arrow to the left of the chart to expand or collapse it. We don’t need the X error bar, so you can click it with the mouse to select and hit delete on the keyboard. Now type = and then select the cell where the action / event is. Located in LRC 116

You might notice we didn’t take the row that has our date “Today”. This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a timeline chart in all versions of Excel: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019. Select your first data label with the mouse. There are multiple layouts for timelines in Excel, and this article shows you how to create them. Select the chart and then Select Data and Add a new data series. That’s the data table completed. Here's the timeline we'll be creating in Excel - you can download the spreadsheet here (ZIP, 22kb). For the X series select C6:C14 – this is the “Start Date” column. In the second column add the start date of the task and the third column the planned duration in days. Also, if you do have an option to use a web-based timeline software, check out our service, Preceden Timeline Maker, which will save you a lot of time and help you create a much better-looking timeline than Excel is capable of. The Excel timelines aren’t tied to Gantt chart data, so you’ll be manually inputting your own data in the pre-defined template fields. Then select the Series “Planned Duration (days)” Y Error Bars (just like the way you selected the X error bars). Select the Fill & Line on the sidebar box and then select Marker.  ​  Green is the obvious choice as this is what we’ve completed. To find an Excel timeline template from Microsoft, open Microsoft Excel and type “Timeline… Change the Error Amount to Percentage and set it as 100%. You should be left with something like this…. Select the chart and on the ribbon go to Chart Tools, Design tab and click select data. At the bottom of this submenu select More Error Bar Options.

To make the Completion % actually show on the chart we need to use error bars in the same way as we did for the task duration. Then change the width to something thicker than the grey error bars that you added earlier. You see the large gridlines covering the chart plot here? If you went with 4pt then 7pt works well.