How to Make a Gantt Chart in Excel: Step-by-Step (2023)

Making a project schedule for your team? You’re going to need the Gantt chart for that.

But unfortunately, Excel doesn’t offer any built-in Gantt chart. And creating your own Gantt chart can be tricky.

Luckily, we’re here to teach you some easy hacks on how to create a Gantt chart in Excel. And everything you need to know about this bar graph is given in this guide below 🧐

So without further ado, let’s dive right into the topic.

Also, if you want to get hands-on experience in making a Gantt chart, download the sample workbook here.

How to make a Gantt chart in Excel

The first thing you need to ask yourself is, why do I need a Gantt chart? Not only does it take time to create a Gantt chart, but sorting project data can be difficult.

You can use a Gantt chart Excel template instead. Like the preformatted Gantt chart template, stacked bar chart, customized Gantt chart, and professional Gantt charts. But these are only so useful. A chart can represent data in a relatively more concise form 🤔

However, the Gantt chart can only be used for a particular purpose, i.e., showing the project timeline. And it’s the best chart for project task management.

But note that the Excel Gantt chart doesn’t work on all types of data. You need to follow a specific data format to make a proper Gantt chart which includes three things.

• Project tasks
• Date
• Time

You can add other information, too, like the end date, project completion, members, notes, etc. But only the above-mentioned three are necessary.

Now that our data is all set to go, let’s create a Gantt chart.

To do that:

1. Select all the data.
2. Click the Insert Column or Bar Chart option from the Insert tab on Ribbon.

3. Select Stacked Bar from 2-D Bar.

4. Chart will appear on the Microsoft Excel worksheet as:

It’s beginning to look like a Gant chart already 📈

But there are still some tweaks to make.

Firstly, as evident from the picture, the project tasks are listed in reverse order. In the Excel stacked bar chart, this is the default method of representing data.

Let’s change the order of the tasks for this chart:

1. Select the categories listed on the Vertical Axis of the graph.

2. Right-click and select Format Axis from the drop-down menu.

3. The Format Axis task pane appears on the right of the chart.
4. Scroll down the Axis Options.
5. Put a checkmark on ‘Categories in Reverse Order.’

The categories will be sorted in the right order:

And it’s done! 😀

Let’s now take it one step closer to a Gantt chart.

1. Right-click any of the blue bars.
2. It will display a drop-down menu. Select ‘Format Data Series‘ at the bottom.

3. The Task Pane will appear.
4. Select the Fill & Line option symbolized by the paint can.

5. Click No Fill under the Fill option and No Line under the Border option.

The blue bars will disappear from the chart as:

That was easy 😅

Pro Tip!

If you want your chart to look more concise and compact, you can delete the legend entry. It is at the bottom of the chart, and it represents the data entries.

It can help understand the data better, but after removing the color and border, they don’t serve many purposes. You can delete the legend by selecting it and hitting the delete key.

Now, for the final touches, we will adjust the horizontal axis of the chart 📊

The chart looks empty after removing the color from the bars.

Let’s fix that.

1. Right-click the gridlines near the horizontal axis.
2. Select Format Axis from the drop-down menu.

3. Select the Horizontal (Value) Axis from the Text options.

4. You will land the Axis Options.

We will now change the Minimum and Maximum bounds from the Axis oprions.

Say, this is our default setting.

The value given here is pretty large. So we will have to guess our way to the right value.

Our final value for Minimum bounds is 44564.0, and for Maximum bounds, it is 44579.0.

The final look of the chart is as follows:

We’re almost there 🤓

Last but not least – let’s add a title to our Gantt chart.

1. Click the Chart Title box at the top.

2. Type in the title. Our chart is titled CGM Project
3. Press Enter.

And tada! Our Gantt chart is all ready 🥳

That’s it – Now what?

Excel doesn’t offer a built-in Gantt chart, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make one.

This method is more of a hack, but it works just fine. All you need is some practice before you master Gantt charts and add them to your Excel skillset 😎

In this article, we saw how to make a Gantt chart. We also saw how to add a Chart title, use the task pane and adjust data on the chart.

But if you’re here to master Excel, you need to know a lot more than that. If you haven’t already tried the VLOOKUP, IF, and SUMIF functions, we suggest you give them a shot.

You can learn them for free in my 3o minute email course that teaches these fantastic functions and much more.

Other resources

If you feel this Gantt chart doesn’t cover all your needs, you can always get one online. These come in a wide variety, and you can choose a Gantt chart depending on your budget and requirements 🤗

If you enjoyed reading this article, we’re sure you’d love to know more. Try reading Gantt Chart in Power BI, Saving Excel Charts as Images, Creating Pareto Charts, and much more.

Frequently asked questions