Download a free gantt chart template for Microsoft Excel® | Updated 5/2/19
- Download A Gantt Chart Template Free
- Download Microsoft Excel Gantt Chart Template
- Excel Gantt Chart Template Download
- Download Gantt Chart Template
Create a project schedule in Excel with an easy-to-use template. Simply enter your tasks and start and end dates - no formulas required. This template uses conditional formatting to generate a Gantt chart like our original Gantt Chart Template, but it has you enter start and end dates instead of start date and duration, and it doesn't require you to copy any formulas. You can add formulas if you want to calculate duration or create task dependencies, and you can read below to learn how to do that, but the point of this design was to keep things as basic as possible.
⤓ DownloadLicense: See the Private Use License (not for distribution or resale). This template has been licensed to Microsoft for distribution via their apps and template gallery.
Using our premade Excel gantt chart schedule template can save you tons of time by organizing your project plan and tackling the tedious planning work for you! All you need to do is plug in your tasks and the dates, and you'll have a presentation-quality Excel gantt chart. This Gantt chart template will help you build a project schedule using a bar chart. The Gantt Chart is a type of a bar chart used to depict a project schedule. Get this basic Gantt chart template you can use and download for free. This is well designed and easy to edit. Get to open this in all +More versions of MS Word and MS Excel. Once you schedule your tasks on a Gantt chart you’ll never go back to the old-fashioned task list. Download the Free Excel Template. DOWNLOAD NOW. Why You Need an Excel Gantt Chart Template. Gantt charts have been around since 1917, when Henry L. Gantt created one as a way to analyze and synthesize workflows. Gantt chart is the simplest-most effective visual for planners and project managers. The most favourite tool to make gantt charts is Excel for two reasons: we curate data in Excel and; Excel stacked bar charts help us create gantt charts easily right inside Excel. Once made, we can share the files with others as templates. The Gantt Chart is a powerful project management tool that illustrates the start and finish dates of project elements Project Budget Template This project budget template provides you with a tool to summarize the cost budget for a project. The Project Budget is a tool used by project managers to estimate the total cost of a project.
Update (4/24/2019): Added a 'Today:' field at the top for entering the date to use for the vertical red line. Enter =TODAY() if you want the date to update automatically.
What is a Gantt Chart?
A Gantt chart is a tool for project management developed by Henry Gantt in the early 1900s. It uses horizontal bars to show the periods of time when each task or resource has been scheduled. It may also show the portion of work completed, task dependencies, milestones, and other data.
A vast number of software applications have been developed for project management, and most of these use a Gantt chart to visualize the project schedule. However, if you don't need all the bells and whistles of these applications, a spreadsheet can be a simple solution.
- Enter Work Days, Calendar Days, or End Date
- Choose Different Colors for the Bars
- Select a Daily, Weekly, or Monthly View
- Create Task Dependencies Easily
- Exclude Holidays from Work Days
How to Use and Customize the Simple Gantt Chart
Although the spreadsheet is compatible with multiple versions of Excel, the following instructions are based on using Excel 2016.
See the article 'How to Use Conditional Formatting in Excel' to learn how to create a simple Gantt chart like this template.
Adding More Tasks
When you insert new tasks, you should first insert a blank row and then enter the task and dates. Right-click on the row number and select Insert. If you do this, the formatting will be copied automatically from the row above.
NOTE You can also copy a row and then insert the copied row, but Excel doesn't automatically merge conditional formatting rules when you do this, resulting in fractured conditional format rules. Go to excel.uservoice.com to Vote on This Suggestion if you would like to encourage Microsoft to fix this problem.
Changing the Weeks Displayed in the Gantt Chart
You can edit the Display Week number to change the period of time displayed in the Gantt Chart. Week 1 is the week containing the Project Start Date. Incrementing the display week number has the effect of scrolling the gantt chart 1 week at a time.
HINTAdd a Scroll Bar! If you are using Excel 2007/2010/2013/2016, you can add a scroll bar form control to the header and link the form control to the cell containing the Display Week number, just as in the original Gantt Chart Template.
Adding More Columns to the Gantt Chart
To increase the time span displayed in the spreadsheet, add columns to the right of the Gantt chart by copying and pasting groups of 7 columns (because the column labels on row 4 are merged cells).
How do I print my entire project schedule?
This template is set up to display 1 day per column. If your project covers a longer period of time (many months), and you don't want to add more columns to the chart, you would need to change the way the dates are displayed in the rows above the Gantt chart as well as the conditional formatting rules (possible, but not simple).
![Template Template](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126154604/832599114.jpg)
If your project spans many months and you don't need or want to display a daily view, you can try the free Construction Schedule template. If you want the ability to change the view from daily to weekly or monthly, check out Gantt Chart Template Pro.
How to Change the Color of the Bars
If you want to edit the bar color used in the Gantt chart, you will need to edit the conditional formatting rules. Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Manage Rules and select 'This Worksheet' to see and edit all the rules.
Gantt Chart Template Pro allows you to change the bar color for individual tasks by entering a color code (like 'g' for green) in a separate column. The free Construction Schedule template also uses that technique.
Showing the Duration of a Task in Days
In this template, column H is hidden by default, but contains a column for calculating the task duration in Days. You can unhide column H, or you can insert your own columns to enter your own formulas.
How to Calculate the Days between Two Dates
To calculate the duration of a task based on the start and end dates, you can use the following formula:
In this template, task_end and task_start are named ranges that use relative references to refer to the values in the Start Date and End Date columns. You can use these named ranges or you can enter the formula using regular cell references such as =F8-E8+1.
How to Calculate Work Days between Two Dates
If you want to display the number of work days between two dates, not counting weekends, then you can use the NETWORKDAYS function that is built into Excel.
The NETWORKDAYS function assumes the non-work days are Saturday and Sunday. To define which days of the week are non-work days, see the Excel help on the function NETWORKDAYS.INTL.
HINT If you want to more easily define tasks using different combinations of start date, end date, calendar days, work days, and predecessors, try Gantt Chart Template Pro
Calculate an End Date by Adding Days to the Start Date
When making a more dynamic project schedule, in addition to creating task dependencies, you may want to use a formula to make the End Date always be X number of days from the Start Date. See the following examples:
1. End Date 50 days after the start date
2. End Date 5 work days (excluding Saturday and Sunday) after the start date
=WORKDAY(task_start,5)
![Download A Gantt Chart Template Download A Gantt Chart Template](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126154604/320607891.jpeg)
Create Dependent Tasks with Formulas
When setting up a project schedule, you may want to use formulas to link dependent tasks so that if you change the start date, the dependent tasks will also change.
A simple way to create a dependent task in this template is to use a formula for the start task such as =end_date+1 where 'end_date' is a reference to the end date of the predecessor task (so the formula might look like =F8+1.
To start the next work day after another date, use =WORKDAY(end_date,1)
Calculate Minimum Start, Maximum End, and Overall Percent Complete
You may want to use a row to summarize the total duration and progress of the project, or you may want to summarize a set of sub-tasks. The following formulas can be used in the Start, End, and Progress columns to summarize a subset of tasks. Replace start_dates and end_dates with the appropriate range references.
1. Calculate the Minimum Start Date
2. Calculate the Maximum End Date
=MAX(end_dates)
3. Calculate the Overall Percent Complete
=SUMPRODUCT(progress_values,end_dates-start_dates+1)/SUMPRODUCT(end_dates-start_dates+1)
Related Content
Contents
PowerPoint presentations that feature a Gantt chart need not be complicated. Sure, there may be instances when your Gantt chart is several rows or columns long, but do you really need to present everything to your audience? Well, that’s what you’re going to find out in this article. Today, I’m going to show you where you can find the best free Gantt chart templates for your PowerPoint presentations.
What Are Gantt Charts?
At first glance, a Gantt chart may look like a bunch of horizontal bars that look vaguely like a timeline. To the untrained eye, it can even look complex and intimidating. But to people who’ve encountered Gantt charts before, they are quite literally, a godsend. This relatively simple tool has made the lives of countless project managers, scheduling managers, team leaders, business owners, CEOs, and more, so much simpler!
In a nutshell, a Gantt chart is a visual tool which makes it easy for everyone involved in the project to know things like:
- The start and end date of various tasks, activities, events and the entire project
- The various stages of the project (from planning to completion)
- The duration of each stage, tasks, events, etc.
- The activities which overlap
- The sequential tasks or activities in the project
- The people or team assigned to each task
- Keeping track of the actual progress
- And so on
With Gantt charts, planning and scheduling complex projects become relatively faster. Depending on the complexity of your project – like the number of sequential and parallel tasks involved, the overall scope of the project, the duration, etc. – you can easily create Gantt charts on your computer. Or not. If you’re like Geof Lory, you can opt to create your Gantt chart using… Lego blocks! But seriously, though, if you want to streamline your project’s management, then it’s best to use computer software.
Using Gantt Chart Software
There are many different kinds of software you can use to create your Gantt chart. You can use good, old-fashioned spreadsheets like Excel and Numbers (Mac). If you collaborate with a team, you can use a web-based tool like Google Sheets.
There are also plenty of premium and browser-based charting tools you can choose from. For instance, a simple Google search of ‘Gantt chart maker’ will yield tons of results.
Tools like GanttPro and ProjectManager help streamline the creation of Gantt charts, which ultimately leads to increased efficiency and better work performance for everybody involved in the project.
Please note, however, that different platforms offer different features at various price points, too. The good news is most of these Gantt chart makers offer a free version of their software, so if you’re in the market for that, then you can certainly try before you buy.
Creating Gantt Charts In Powerpoint
There are quite a few ways to go about creating Gantt charts in PowerPoint. Here are two of the most popular methods:
- Import or copy data from Excel
Here’s a quick video that will show you how you can import your data from Excel and then use it to create a Gantt chart in PowerPoint.
- Create Gantt chart directly on PowerPoint
There are two ways to go about creating a Gantt chart in PowerPoint. You can do this the easy way or the hard way.
Let me show you the hard way first:
As you can see from the video, you’ll need to manually create a table, add in milestones or events, draw the shapes, color the shapes, etc. If you don’t need to do a complicated Gantt chart, you can probably finish this in under an hour. But good luck if you need to do a complex chart! You’d probably spend a few days working on your chart! Luckily for you, there’s an easy option: free Gantt chart PowerPoint templates!
Free Gantt Chart Templates For PowerPoint
Templates help save presenters a ton of time. They generally make people’s lives a whole lot easier. If you don’t want to waste hours upon hours designing slides for your Gantt chart, then you should definitely check out these free templates below:
This free template pack is comprised of 10 slides; this includes the cover and thank you slides. Business and corporate presenters who need to show their project’s proposed schedule or actual progress can benefit from this template. These slides are easy enough to edit and are highly versatile. You can use the different charts to represent daily, weekly, monthly and yearly tasks or events.
Here are some of the slides included in this template pack:
If you want to present the different daily tasks involved in your project, then you can use this slide. You have a description box on the left side of the slide. You can use it to describe what the collective goal of all the tasks is, or you can use it to write down the legend of what the colors on the chart represent. While this chart currently follows a daily format, you can easily edit this if you want to convert this into a weekly or even monthly Gantt chart. You simply need to edit the text at the top.
Use this slide if you need to display your project’s monthly activities or events. Note that the slide denotes a series of parallel events; if you need to show sequential events, that is, events that happen one after the other, then you simply need to move the green shapes around until they correspond with the correct start and end dates.
This is a different way of presenting your monthly and weekly tasks. There’s no task description on the left like you’ve seen with other slides, but you can use the icons on the right, and color-code it to match the horizontal bars on the chart.
This is another version of the monthly Gantt chart that you can use for free. You can put a short description of your tasks as well as use icons right beside the color-coded horizontal bars. If a different person is assigned to each task, then you can add their names right below the Task name. If you want an uncluttered look for your Gantt chart, then this may be a good slide for your presentation.
This annual or yearly Gannt chart is best used for long-term projects. If you need to show your investors or your shareholders your long-term plans, then this is the slide you need to use. You can show how the project progresses each month and when each task is expected to finish. If you need to go beyond 12 months or 1 year, then you can easily edit the PowerPoint slide as you see fit.
If you want to highlight the most important events or tasks in your project, then you need to use this slide. You don’t want to list down all your tasks here because your slide is going to become crowded. As you can see, there’s plenty of white space on the slide, so it’s really on the eyes. For best results, pick 4 or 5 relevant tasks and arrange it by their start date.
For academic presentations, especially those in the Sciences, this free Gantt chart template pack may be suitable for your needs. Our in-house designers have kept the design simple enough to match academic requirements. Of course, if you want to use this for business presentations, you’re certainly free to do so. You can simply swap out the background image and the Science icons to make it more appropriate for your business audience.
While this template pack only includes 3 slides, we find it’s more than enough for most Science presentations.
For this slide, you will need to insert the month, probably on the horizontal axis, so that your audience can easily deduce the start and end points of each task. Alternatively, if you want to describe weekly tasks, you can just insert the week numbers on the slide.
For projects that start and finish within 3 months, you can use this slide to describe the most important events within this time period. The horizontal bars are color-coded; you can add a short description at the bottom-center of the slide.
For Science projects that take up to a year (or more), then this is the slide you need to use. Obviously, you will need to select the most important tasks only because you don’t want to crowd out your slide and bore your audience. If you need to display a bar chart of your project data, you can edit the chart at bottom-right of the slide.
Office Timeline certainly knows their way around Gantt charts and timelines in general. After all, they’ve created a PowerPoint Gantt chart add-in that makes the whole creation process super simple. Their free templates have been downloaded thousands of times.
You can download any of the free templates shown in the screenshot above. Simply click on the template you want to use, then hit the Download button. They include 2 slide options per template: standard (4:3) and widescreen (16:9). You can also choose between a light and dark layout.
If you have an older version of PowerPoint (2010 or 2013), then you can check out the free templates from this site. You can click on a template pack you want to use and scroll down the page to look at screenshots of individual slides.
You can select from a variety of free PPT Gantt Chart templates on this site. Simply scroll down the page and click on the download button. While I find most of the templates to be outdated and boring, these are nevertheless a good option, if for some reason, our free templates are not to your liking.
Download A Gantt Chart Template Free
The Right Way To Present Gantt Charts In Your Presentation
Some presenters cram their entire Gantt chart on a single slide, while some may use up several slides for a single chart. They think that they need to show every single detail of their project to their audience. But if you were in the audience’s shoes, would you have cared what all those details meant? Your answer is most likely a big NO.
When it comes to presenting Gantt charts in presentations, it’s important to only share the most relevant and most important details about the project. You don’t want to bore your audience to death! If you show them slide after slide of your Gantt chart, they’re going to end up cross-eyed at the end of your presentation!
Obviously, you want your audience to learn something new from your presentation. You want them to pay attention. The best way to do this is by sharing only the most important events, tasks, milestones of your project. No need to dump your entire project on your unsuspecting victims.
Download Microsoft Excel Gantt Chart Template
Final Words
Excel Gantt Chart Template Download
Gantt charts are important not just in project management, but in the business and corporate world in general. When creating Gantt charts, attention to detail is a necessity. However, when it comes to presenting your chart in front of an audience, you need to cherry pick the most important events or tasks that are relevant to whatever your presentation’s goal is. The free Gantt chart templates I’ve shared in this article should help you present just the right amount of detail to your audience.