Everything you need to plan with Gantt Excel
Plain-English guides to building and running your project — how tasks link together, how dates are worked out, and how to read what the chart is telling you.
Twenty-six guides, written from the product itself. If you are new, start with Creating your first chart and work down — the order below is the order things make sense in. If you are looking for one answer, the sections are the fastest way in.
All guides
Getting started
Troubleshooting
Enabling macros in Excel
The red Automation Off bar, the yellow security bar, and the blocked downloaded file that stops macros without ever asking you — fixed on Windows and Mac.
Read guide →Getting started
Creating your first chart
From an empty workbook to a chart with tasks on it — enabling macros, the New Project dialog, and the daily-or-hourly choice that is fixed once you make it.
Read guide →Getting started
The Gantt Excel tab & your chart sheet
A tour of the ribbon, the columns on the sheet, and the right-click menu — including which columns are yours to use and which belong to the app.
Read guide →Getting started
Keyboard shortcuts
Every shortcut Gantt Excel adds, the whole ribbon from the keyboard, and why Ctrl D and Ctrl + are deliberately switched off on a chart.
Read guide →Tasks
Tasks
Adding, editing & deleting tasks
Every way to get a task onto the sheet, including typing straight into the grid — plus duplicating, reordering, and what deleting a parent takes with it.
Read guide →Tasks
The Task Form
A full tour: names, the Estimated / Baseline / Actual date bands, progress, resources, costs and bar colours — with an interactive labelled diagram.
Read guide →Tasks
Milestones
Marking a moment rather than a stretch of work — the two ways to create one, how it draws, and why converting a task is harder to undo than you would expect.
Read guide →Tasks
Summary tasks, indenting & the WBS
Building a hierarchy, what a parent calculates from its children, and why a summary task’s fields are locked.
Read guide →Tasks
Priority, status & task colours
Setting priority, why Status is calculated rather than chosen, and what every colour on a task row is telling you.
Read guide →Scheduling
Scheduling
Linking tasks with dependencies
The four link types — FS, SS, FF, SF — lags and leads, and how a link reschedules your dates.
Read guide →Scheduling
The Critical Path & float
The five calculated columns, the red highlight, and how float works on both day-based and hourly charts.
Read guide →Scheduling
Planning by the hour
Hourly charts, shift hours and overnight work — and the difference between a chart’s kind and the view you are looking at it through.
Read guide →Resources & cost
Resources
Resources, calendars & working days
The quiet engine behind every date in your plan: working days, holidays, shift hours, and the Organization calendar that applies when nobody is assigned.
Read guide →Cost
Work, costs & budget
Planned work against the automatic figure, how Resource Cost is actually worked out, and the project budget line.
Read guide →Tracking progress
% Complete
Understanding % Complete
Manual against Automatic entry, and Simple against Weighted roll-up for summary tasks — with side-by-side worked examples.
Read guide →Tracking
Baselines & actuals
Freezing the plan you agreed to, recording what really happened, and reading the slippage between them.
Read guide →Views & output
Views
Views, timeline & zoom
Daily through Yearly, setting the timeline window, Show Full Timeline, and jumping straight to a task’s bar.
Read guide →Views
Grouping & task filters
Showing only the tasks you care about, collapsing phases — and why half the ribbon goes grey when a filter is on.
Read guide →Reporting
The Project Dashboard
Budget tiles, the completion donut, and charts across one project or every project in the workbook.
Read guide →Reporting
The Web Report
One HTML file you can email to anyone — no Excel needed. Works offline, prints cleanly, and takes your own branding.
Read guide →Data
Exporting & printing
PDF and Excel exports, what travels with each, and getting a printout that does not run over forty pages.
Read guide →Data
Importing Gantt charts
Bringing charts in from another workbook — several at once, each with its own settings and resources.
Read guide →Customising
Settings
Settings
Every control in the Settings window, what it changes, and which ones wait for Apply.
Read guide →Appearance
Colours & themes
Recolouring one bar or the whole chart, how themes work, and why a swatch sometimes refuses to change.
Read guide →Language
Working in another language
Eleven languages, the difference between a project’s language and the app’s, and what each one changes.
Read guide →Licence