How to Make a Gantt Chart in Excel, Step by Step

An Excel Gantt chart is a stacked bar chart in disguise. Excel has no Gantt chart button, so Microsoft’s own help page builds one by stacking two numbers for each task, the day it starts and how long it lasts, and then hiding the first part of every bar. This guide walks through that method in five steps, gives you a template table to copy, explains the date axis problem that trips most people up, and shows the same chart made in a browser without Excel.

Here is the chart we are going to build. Each bar is one task. It starts on the day the task starts and ends on the day it finishes.

What You Need Before You Start

A Gantt chart in Excel needs a small, tidy table. Get the table right and the chart takes two minutes. Get it wrong and no amount of formatting will fix it.

The Three Columns Excel Needs

Microsoft’s example uses the range A1:C6: a header row and five tasks, with three columns.

1. Task. A short name for each piece of work. These become the labels on the vertical axis.
2. Start. When the task begins. This becomes the invisible first part of each bar.
3. Duration. How many days the task takes. This becomes the visible bar.

Notice what is missing: an end date. Excel stacks the duration on top of the start, so the end of the bar is start plus duration. If your plan has end dates, work out the duration with a formula instead of typing it.

A Template You Can Copy

Copy this table into cell A1 of a new sheet. The dates are real calendar dates starting on Monday, October 5, 2026. The last two columns are formulas you add once and fill down.

• Start day in D2 is =B2-$B$2, the number of days since the project began. The dollar signs keep the reference fixed on the first start date when you fill the formula down.
• Duration in E2 is =C2-B2, the end date minus the start date.

In this template the end date is the day the next piece of work can begin, so Research runs from October 5 to October 12 and lasts 7 days. If you prefer to count both the first and the last day, add 1 to every duration. Pick one convention and keep it for the whole plan.

Dates Are Numbers in Excel

Excel stores every date as a serial number. Microsoft’s documentation for the DATEVALUE function states that January 1, 1900 is serial number 1 by default, and every day after it adds one. October 5, 2026 is 46300. That is why subtracting two dates gives you a number of days, and it is also the reason for the axis problem described further down.

How to Make a Gantt Chart in Excel, Step by Step

These steps follow Microsoft’s help page, “Present your data in a Gantt chart in Excel”, which applies to Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016. Microsoft’s detailed steps are written for the Mac, where you hold Control and click. On Windows, a right-click opens the same menus in most versions.

Step 1: Select the Data

Select the Task column and the two number columns you want to chart, the start and the duration. In the template, select A1:A7, then hold the Ctrl key (Command on a Mac, as Microsoft’s steps say for ranges that are not next to each other) and add D1:E7. Start day sits to the left of Duration, so Excel stacks it first, which is what the method needs.

If you chart the Start date column instead of Start day, read the section on real dates below before you continue.

Step 2: Insert a Stacked Bar Chart

Go to Insert, then Recommended Charts, and choose Stacked Bar. Excel draws one horizontal bar per task, made of two colored segments: the start first, then the duration.

It looks nothing like a Gantt chart yet. Every bar begins at zero, and the first segment is just as visible as the second.

Step 3: Hide the Start Series

Click any blue segment. That selects the whole first data series. On the Format tab, choose Shape Fill, then No Fill. The start segments vanish, and each duration bar now floats at the point where its task begins.

This is the whole trick. The chart still contains the start values, since they are what position the bars, but nobody can see them.

Step 4: Put the First Task at the Top

Excel draws the first row of a bar chart at the bottom, so your first task ends up last. To fix it, select the vertical axis with the task names, open Format Axis, and under Axis position choose Categories in reverse order. Microsoft’s page calls this reversing the task order so that it starts with Task1.

Step 5: Tidy the Chart

Microsoft suggests deleting the legend and the chart title if you do not need them: click each one and press Delete. The legend is useless here anyway, since one of its two entries is invisible. From the Chart Design tab you can then:

• use Add Chart Element for gridlines and data labels,
• pick a Quick Layout,
• choose Change Colors for the bars.

To reuse the finished chart for your next project, Control-click it (right-click on Windows) and choose Save as Template.

Using Real Dates on the Axis

The day numbers in the template are the easy route. Many people chart the start dates directly, and then something odd happens.

Why the Chart Starts in 1900

Excel plots a date as its serial number. A start date of October 5, 2026 is 46300, so the invisible start segment stretches from zero to 46300, and your real bars are squeezed into a thin strip at the far right of the chart. The chart is correct. The axis simply begins about 126 years too early.

The usual fix is to set the minimum of the horizontal axis to your project’s first start date, as a number. Open Format Axis on the date axis and look for the minimum bound; type 46300, or whatever your first date is as a number (format the cell as General to see it). Microsoft’s Gantt page does not cover this step, so the exact name of the option can vary between versions. Set the maximum to your last end date if Excel adds empty space at the end.

Day Numbers Instead of Dates

The Start day column in the template avoids the problem entirely. Day 0 is the project start, and every bar is placed by how many days into the project it begins. You lose the calendar dates on the axis, but you can put the start date in the chart title, as in our example, and nothing needs adjusting when the project moves: change the first date and every formula updates.

Excel Gantt Chart Templates

You do not have to build the chart yourself. Microsoft’s help page says as much: on Windows it points straight to its Gantt chart templates.

Microsoft’s Own Templates

Microsoft’s template gallery for Excel lists three Gantt templates by name: Simple Gantt chart, Agile Gantt chart and Gantt project planner. According to the gallery page, they create horizontal bars automatically from your task table and let you set planned start, actual start, duration, category, assignee and progress. Microsoft’s help page describes them as free templates and also notes that a Microsoft 365 subscription offers Gantt templates with color-coded categories. Check what your own Excel version offers before you commit a project to one.

When a Template Beats Building Your Own

Use a template when the plan will live in Excel for months and several people will update it. The templates already contain progress columns, a marker for the current period and conditional formatting. Build your own when you need one clean chart for a report and full control over how it looks. The stacked bar method gives you a real Excel chart object that you can copy into Word or PowerPoint.

Working Days, Dependencies and Milestones

A plain stacked bar chart shows when each task runs. Real schedules need three more things.

Counting Working Days

If your team does not work weekends, a duration of 10 calendar days is not 10 days of work. Excel’s NETWORKDAYS function returns the number of whole working days between two dates, leaving out weekends and any holidays you list. NETWORKDAYS.INTL does the same with a weekend of your choice. Use it in the Duration column when your plan is measured in working days, and keep the chart in calendar days so the bars still line up with the calendar.

Dependencies

A stacked bar chart cannot draw arrows between tasks. Microsoft’s own advice for dependencies in its templates is to highlight dependent task names with conditional formatting or to insert arrows by hand. In a plain chart you can do the same: draw connector lines from the Insert menu. They do not move when the dates change, so add them last.

The better fix is in the data. Make a task’s start date a formula that points at the end date of the task it waits for. In the template, type =C2 into B3, the Start date of Design, so it always begins when Research ends. Then when Research slips, Design moves with it.

Milestones

A milestone has no duration, so in a stacked bar chart it has no bar. Two workarounds are common: give the milestone a duration of 1 so it shows as a short block, or keep it out of the chart and name it in the title or a label. Our Gantt chart maker takes a duration of 0 days as a milestone, so you do not need either workaround there.

Showing Progress

Wikipedia’s article on Gantt charts describes a progress Gantt chart, where each task is shaded in proportion to how much of it is complete. In Excel you can get the same picture by splitting the duration into two series, Done and Remaining, and stacking both after the invisible start.

Make the Same Chart Without Excel

If all you need is the picture, you can skip the formatting. Two options run in your browser, with nothing to install and no account.

With the Gantt Chart Maker

Our Gantt chart maker takes the task, the start date and either an end date or a number of days, and you can paste them straight from a spreadsheet range. It reads the dates as dates, so there is no 1900 axis to fix, and it has columns for the task each one waits for and the percent done, so dependencies and progress need no extra series.

Open this launch plan in the Gantt chart maker

With the Bar Graph Maker

Every chart on this page was drawn by our bar graph maker with exactly Microsoft’s recipe: horizontal bars, stacked, a first series called Start day colored transparent, and the legend hidden. Open one to see the settings. Unlike Excel, it keeps the rows in table order, so the first task is already at the top.

Keep the start series transparent when you edit it. If you pick a new color for that series, the start segments reappear.

Common Problems and Fixes

• All bars start at zero. The start series is still visible. Select it and set No Fill.
• The bars are crushed against the right edge. You charted dates, and the axis starts at 0. Set the axis minimum to your first start date as a number.
• The first task is at the bottom. Reverse the category order on the vertical axis.
• A bar is missing. Its duration is 0 or blank, or the end date is before the start date.
• Durations look one day short. Decide whether the end date is inclusive; if it is, add 1 to each duration.
• The chart does not update when dates change. Duration or Start day was typed as a number instead of a formula.

For the background, where the chart comes from and what each part means, read what is a Gantt chart. If your team works in Google Sheets, the method there is similar but not identical: see how to make a Gantt chart in Google Sheets.