Microsoft® Office Excel 2003 Inside Out

Creating Gannt Charts

The recommended way to create a Gannt chart is with a project-management program, such as Microsoft Project. But if you must create it in Excel, you can—sort of. Figure 27-9 shows a primitive Gannt chart created in Excel.

Figure 27-9. With the Floating Bars chart type on the Custom Types tab, you can create a simple Gannt chart.

This chart uses Floating Bars, an option on the Custom Types tab of the Chart Type dialog box. It plots two series—a start date and a duration. The start date is plotted as an offset from some date. Task 1, for example, begins 0 days from this reference point, Task 2 starts 4 days from the reference point, ...