Manual Gantt Charting in Excel

A long time ago, I offhandedly wrote that I used to make Gantt Charts in Excel to help visualize project flow. I've never uploaded these files because I didn't think they were that exciting. I'm basically just using Excel like graph paper, and there is absolutely no automatic calculation at all. On the other hand, it's probably a lot EASIER to keep up to date, through copying/pasting and inline annotation, than actual software like Microsoft Project.

Enough people have asked, however, that I'm finally releasing a couple of examples of how I put these Excel-based Gantt charts together.

When you download the ZIP archive, you'll see two files:

• The .xlsx file, for Microsoft Office 2007, with fancy shading.
• The regular old .xls file, for older versions of Excel.

The color schemes are slightly different in each file, but you should get the idea. Again, you will not find anything earth-shattering in here, but you might have fun playing around with the formatting.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: I originally mentioned that I made these Excel Gantt charts way back in the first Compact Calendar post, which is another ad-hoc planning approach I use to estimate projects.

UPDATE 2: Kent Larsson has converted the template to Google Spreadsheets! Thanks Kent!