Activating your licence

Every copy of Gantt Excel carries the same code, and a licence code stored inside the workbook activates it. That has one very practical consequence: activating never means downloading a different file or re-typing your plan. You enter a code into the workbook you are already working in, and carry on where you left off.

01 Where your licence lives

To see the licence a workbook is running under, go to Gantt Excel → Gantt Excel → About. The window’s title bar names the product type, and the line beneath it reads Licensed to: followed by the name the licence was activated under. On a workbook with no name stored against it at all — an older file, or one brought in from elsewhere — that line reads Unregistered instead.

When you first open a new copy, Gantt Excel shows a short Welcome to Gantt Excel window asking for your name and email — Enter your name and email to get started. — and a Start button. The name you type there is only used to greet you; it is not a licence.

02 Activating your licence

Activation happens inside the workbook you want to unlock, from the Activate License button on the Gantt Excel tab. It sits in a group of its own with no heading above it, so look for the button rather than for a section name.

Worked example — activating the kitchen refit workbook

Sam Whitfield buys a licence on 3 September 2026 and wants it on the kitchen-refit plan she has already been building.

She opens Kitchen Refit.xlsm, clicks Activate License, picks English when the language window appears, and types her name, the address she bought with, and the code from her order email. She clicks Activate; the status line reads Checking License… for about four seconds. A thank-you message names her edition, a second message points her at the ribbon, and she closes both.

To confirm it took, she opens Gantt Excel → Gantt Excel → About. The title bar names her product type and the line beneath reads Licensed to: Sam Whitfield. Her tasks, dates and links are exactly as she left them — activation changed nothing but the licence. The Activate License button is gone from the tab, because there is nothing left to activate.

If activation does not go through

Each failure has its own wording, and the wording is what tells you which one you have:

• Name is required. · Email address is required. · License code is required. — one or more boxes are empty. Nothing is sent until all three are filled in.
• Invalid license code or incorrect email address. — this one has two causes. Either the code and the email do not match each other, or the code is not in a shape Gantt Excel recognises at all, in which case it is rejected on the spot without the shop ever being contacted. If it comes back instantly, suspect the code itself — a stray character, or the wrong string pasted in entirely. If it comes back after a pause, check the email as carefully as you check the code.
• This license code has reached the maximum number of activations allowed. — the code is genuine but has been used on its full quota of files. That one comes with Contact [email protected] for help., and it closes the activation window rather than letting you try again.
• Unable to contact server. Contact Gantt Excel Support. — Gantt Excel could not reach the shop at all. Usually a firewall or a dropped connection; the window stays open, so try again before you write in.

03 Windows and Mac licences

Licences are issued per platform, and a Windows-only licence will not run a workbook on a Mac. Type one into the activation window on macOS and it is refused there and then, with a message saying so.

The same check runs whenever the file is opened, not only at activation. A workbook that already carries a Windows-only licence and is later opened on a Mac shows the same refusal and closes itself, rather than running in a state nobody has tested. If you work across both platforms, email [email protected] — there is a licence that covers Windows and macOS together.

04 Common questions

Related: Creating your first chart · Planning by the hour · Settings · The Project Dashboard