Adding, editing & deleting tasks
Everything you do to the task list itself — creating tasks, changing them, copying them, reordering them and removing them. Including the fastest way of all, which is simply to type into the sheet.
A Gantt Excel chart is a normal Excel sheet with a very opinionated engine behind it. That gives you two quite different ways of working: you can type straight into the grid the way you would in any spreadsheet, or you can drive everything from the Gantt Excel ribbon tab and the right-click menu. Both go through exactly the same validation and the same scheduling maths, so neither is the “proper” way — pick whichever suits the moment.
Throughout this guide we build part of the Oakfield Villa: “Site clearance”, “Excavate foundations”, “Drainage and services”, “Pour footings”.
01 The quickest way in: type into the grid
At the bottom of every task list is a greyed-out italic row that reads Type here to add a new task. Click it, type a name, press Enter — and you have a task. That is the whole procedure. Gantt Excel fills in everything else and drops a fresh placeholder row underneath, ready for the next one.
The task you get is deliberately bland, so you can rattle off a list of names first and think about dates afterwards.
The WBS number is worked out for you as well. So typing “Site clearance”, Enter, “Excavate foundations”, Enter, “Drainage and services”, Enter gives you three numbered, scheduled, one-day tasks in about ten seconds.
Worked example — three tasks in ten seconds
It is Friday 7 August and you are working a Monday–Friday week. You click the placeholder row and type the three names above. Friday is a working day, so all three tasks come out with a start date of Fri 7 August — today — a duration of 1, and an end date of Fri 7 August. They are numbered 1, 2 and 3. Had you typed them on the Saturday, they would all have started Mon 10 August instead.
They are stacked on the same day, which is not a plan yet — but it is three real tasks on the chart, and spreading them out is now just three duration edits: type 2, 3 and 4 into the Duration cells and the end dates land on Mon 10, Tue 11 and Wed 12 August respectively — the weekend is skipped, so a two-day task starting Friday finishes on the Monday.
02 Editing by typing, too
Once a task exists, every visible column can be edited in place — dates, duration, resource, costs, % Complete, priority, status, notes. A cell edit runs the same validators as the form, so typing 10 into a Duration cell does exactly what typing 10 into the form’s Duration box does: the end date moves, the bar redraws, and anything linked to the task reschedules behind it.
03 Adding from the ribbon and the right-click menu
The other route creates the task and opens the Task Form on it, so you can set dates, resources and costs in one pass. Select the row you want the new task to sit at, then:
Gantt Excel → Tasks → Add Task. The new task is inserted at the row you selected, pushing that row and everything below it down. It takes the indent level of the row it replaces, so it stays in the same section.
Right-click a task row and choose Add Task below Selection to put it underneath instead. Right-click on a parent task and the new task becomes that parent’s first child; right-click on an ordinary task and it arrives as a sibling at the same level.
Either way the Task Form opens on the new task. Fill it in and click OK — nothing is saved until you do.
To add a moment rather than a job, use Add Milestone — it is the same flow with a zero-duration diamond at the end of it, covered in the Milestones guide.
The right-click menu
Right-clicking a cell on a Gantt sheet gives you the ten commands you use most, above Excel’s own menu items: Add Task at Selection, Add Task below Selection, Add Milestone, Edit Task, Delete Task / Milestone, Duplicate Task / Milestone, Make Task Parent, Make Task Child, Show Task in Timeline and Refresh Gantt Chart.
The Tasks section of the ribbon
Nine buttons, in the order you tend to need them. The keys against the first five are the ribbon’s own access keys — press Alt, then G, then the letter — while the arrow shortcuts on the last four are held down together.
- Add Task. Inserts a new task at the selected row and opens the Task Form on it — Alt G A.
- Add Milestone. The same, but creates a zero-duration milestone marker — Alt G M.
- Edit. Opens the Task Form on the selected task — Alt G E, or Alt Enter.
- Duplicate. Copies the selected task, and its children, immediately below it — Alt G D.
- Delete. Removes the selected task after a confirmation prompt — Alt G X.
- Make Parent. Outdents the task one level — Alt ←.
- Make Child. Indents the task one level under the task above — Alt →.
- Move Up. Moves the task, with its children, one place up — Alt ↑.
- Move Down. Moves it one place down — Alt ↓.
04 Editing a task
There are four ways to open the Task Form on an existing task, and they all land in the same place:
- Double-click the task row — the everyday one.
- Gantt Excel → Tasks → Edit.
- Right-click → Edit Task.
- Alt Enter on the selected row.
Double-clicking opens the form only where the column has nothing more specific to do — which, in practice, means the task name. Several columns answer a double-click their own way: Resource opens the resource picker, Priority opens the priority picker, the six date columns open the date picker, WBS scrolls the timeline to that task’s bar, Done ticks the task off, and any of the four colour columns opens a colour picker for that bar. On the timeline itself, a double-click sets the task’s Estimated Start Date to the day you clicked.
05 Duplicating a task
Select a task and use Gantt Excel → Tasks → Duplicate, or right-click → Duplicate Task / Milestone. The copy is inserted immediately below the original, and everything else on the sheet shifts down and renumbers.
“Does it copy the whole branch?”
Yes. Duplicating a parent copies the parent and every task beneath it, at the same indent levels, as one block. Duplicate a “Groundworks” summary with four sub-tasks under it and you get five new rows, not one.
That makes it the fastest way to repeat a pattern — the same run of tasks for a second bathroom, a second floor, a second site.
“Does the copy keep its dependencies?”
No — and on purpose. The copy comes through with no predecessors and no successors, so it cannot silently wire itself into your existing schedule and start moving other tasks about.
Everything else is carried over: dates, duration, resource, costs, priority, status, progress, notes and colours. Re-link the copy yourself once it is where you want it.
06 Deleting tasks
Select the task and use Gantt Excel → Tasks → Delete, or right-click → Delete Task / Milestone. You always get a confirmation first, headed Delete Confirmation, and the No button is the one that is pre-selected — so a stray Enter cancels rather than deletes.
07 Reordering tasks
Use Move Up and Move Down in the Tasks section, or Alt ↑ and Alt ↓. A task moves with its children — the whole branch travels as one block — and the WBS numbering rewrites itself afterwards. The Alt keys are the quickest way to restructure a list; they and the rest of the shortcuts are collected in Keyboard shortcuts.
One rule catches people out: a child task can only move within its own parent. Try to walk a sub-task past the end of its section and you get Child tasks can be moved only within the parent task.
To move it somewhere else entirely, outdent it first with Make Parent, move it, then indent it back under its new owner. Moving is one task at a time; a multi-row selection gets You can move only one task or milestone at a time.
08 When the task buttons go grey
Filtering the task list hides rows, and an add, delete, duplicate or move against a list where you cannot see all the rows is how tasks end up in the wrong place. So Gantt Excel switches those commands off rather than letting them run half-blind. There are two separate causes, and the product names whichever one applies:
“I turned off Show Completed.”
The three tickboxes in the Filters section — Show Completed, Show In Progress, Show Not Started — hide tasks by status. With any one of them off, the buttons grey out and their tooltip reads Not available while the task list is filtered. Turn Show Completed, Show In Progress and Show Not Started back on to use this.
“I used Excel’s own filter arrows.”
An AutoFilter on the task grid does the same, and the tooltip reads Not available while a column filter is active. Switch the Filter button off to use this.
Trying to add a task anyway explains where to click: You cannot add a new task when the data is filtered. Click the small Clear filter arrow icon next to the header name – Task to clear filters.
09 Common questions
Can I undo a delete?
Why did my new task land inside the wrong section?
Why won’t Excel let me insert a row?
My duplicated task lost its dependencies. Is that a bug?
I cleared a task’s name and the row is still there.
Enter a task name. To delete the task use the Delete Task button.Deleting is a deliberate action with a confirmation, and it has to be.
Where is the right-click menu on my Mac?
Related: The Task Form · Summary tasks, indenting & the WBS · Milestones · Grouping & task filters