How To Make A Gantt Chart In Excel For Free. No Plugins Or Add-Ons Needed!

If Excel doesn’t support automatically making Gantt charts, why would you want to make one?

For one specific reason: because it’s the best way to show project timelines.

Whether you’re planning a project and showing estimated time commitments or reviewing a project and showing what actually happened, a Gantt chart makes your information clearer than any other graph.

Scheduling, task assignment, and other project-management-related concepts are all well-represented by a Gantt chart.

But because creating on is rather involved, if you’re considering using a Gantt chart for anything else, make absolutely sure there isn’t a better graph for your purpose.

A line graph is great for showing fluctuating values over time, for example. And a column chart is good for comparing sets of values.

If there’s another chart that will serve your purpose, we recommend using it, as creating a Gantt chart is a bit involved.

To create a Gantt chart, you’ll need to have your data in a very specific format. We’ll take a look at it, then go over each part:

You’ll need three different sections in your data:

• Task
• Start date
• Duration

You could also include an end date, notes, or other information, but these are the only three you’ll need for your Gantt chart.

The date format you use is up to you—just make sure you’re consistent throughout your document.

Now that your data is formatted, you can start the process of making your Gantt chart.

The first you’ll need to do is create a stacked bar chart. Go to the Insert tab in the Ribbon, click on Insert Column or Bar Chart, and select Stacked Bar:

You’ll see a chart that looks like this:

This is starting to look like a Gantt chart, but we need to make some changes.

First, right-click on any blue bar and select Format Data Series:

A panel will slide in from the right side of the screen.

Click on the paint can, then select No Fill and No Line (in the Border section):

Now, close the panel and click on your chart.

The blue bars will have disappeared, leaving you with a Gantt chart!

You may notice that the tasks were added in reverse order. Let’s change that.

Right-click on your task list (in the chart; it’s the vertical axis label) and select Format Axis:

Under Axis Options, you’ll see a checkbox labelled Categories in reverse order. Make sure that’s checked.

Now your Gantt chart should be looking good!

In the chart above, each task only occurs once. But many Gantt charts require recurring tasks.

The solution to this in Excel isn’t exactly elegant, but it works.

First, head back to your task list spreadsheet.

Let’s say we want to add another occurrence of “RFP Review.”

In the column after duration, you’ll need to add the number of days between the two occurrences.

Our first occurrence goes from March 1st to March 3rd. If we want another one on March 10th, we’ll need to type a 7 in the next column.

In the column after that, we’ll add the duration of the next occurrence:

When we make the Gantt chart again, you’ll see an important difference:

Follow the same steps as above to get rid of the blue bars, then do the exact same thing for the grey bar:

Finally, right-click on the yellow bar, select Format Data Series, and use the Fill options to change the color so it matches the other bars (you’ll usually need to select Solid Fill first):

It’s not the most efficient process, but it works!

Excel doesn’t have built-in capabilities to create Gantt charts, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done!

It might seem like a very roundabout way to make a Gantt chart, but once you’ve done it a few times, it will become very natural and you’ll be creating Gantt charts in just a few minutes.