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.

Version 2 (2009)

This is a version that will calculate the shading for you automatically and mark the months based on the input of a starting date. This version is also set up to print gridlines, which makes it useful for printing out "gantt paper" to sketch on.

Download the dseah-gantt-excel2.zip archive to your computer and uncompress it. The resulting folder will contain two files:

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

There are instructions on its use on the first worksheet. Note that there is an example worksheet included; check the document tabs at the bottom.

Version 1 (2007)

This is the older version, which does not automatically shade the weekends or recalculate based on the input date.

When you download and uncompress the dseah-gantt-excel.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.

If you are doing rough scheduling at a meeting, you can use the Compact Calendar, which is helpful for visualizing future time as one resource block. Unlike a Gantt chart, however, it does not show dependencies between multiple project sub-tasks.

Enjoy!