A gantt chart provides a visual snapshot of your project and makes it easy to communicate the big picture to everyone involved in the project.
Microsoft Excel is a go-to tool for many gantt chart beginners because they have easy access to it and are already familiar with its features. But making a gantt chart in Excel can be tedious work if you’re starting with a blank slate.
We created 6 automated templates you can download, customize, and share. These free Excel gantt chart templates simplify planning and enable you to:
Just keep in mind that Excel gantt chart templates work best for simple projects that won’t require a ton of collaboration or schedule changes. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of extra time manually updating your timeline and emailing the latest version to everyone involved in the project.
If the projects you manage are more complex, you’ll save more time and effort with TeamGantt. Check out this quick Excel vs. TeamGantt comparison to see how.
Use this free Excel template to simplify complex projects into an easy-to-follow plan and track the status of tasks as work progresses. We made this weekly gantt chart template easy, powerful, and painless to use for projects of any kind.
Simply plug in your tasks, dates, and resources, and you'll have a presentation-quality Excel gantt chart. Be sure to update the percent complete as work progresses to stay on top of project tracking.
Many construction managers use gantt charts to schedule construction timelines because it’s easier to visualize how and when work will get done and track progress against your estimates. We built this downloadable Excel template to help you break ground on your next construction project, whether it’s a new home build or much-needed renovation.
This gantt chart template is easy to customize, so feel free to keep your plan high-level or dig into details with a full project build-out.
See more construction management templates
When all your important tasks and milestones live on a shared marketing calendar, your whole team can keep track of timelines and stay on pace with your goals. This easy Excel gantt chart template makes it easy to get started.
Use this template to track go-live dates for important marketing deliverables so your team can easily see what needs to be accomplished for the month, quarter, or even year.
See more gantt chart templates for marketers
A blog content calendar helps you establish a regular posting schedule and strategize topics so content stays fresh and engaging. This Excel blog calendar template enables you to schedule and track all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into content production—from writing and design to review and publication.
Use it to manage every step of content production so key milestones and deadlines on the way to publication don’t slip through the cracks.
See more gantt chart templates for creative professionals
Need to create a big-picture plan for an event? Our Excel event plan template makes it easy to keep event stakeholders informed about project status with high-level updates that are easy to digest.
Use this free gantt chart template to establish a general timeline for major tasks that need to be accomplished. That way, everyone knows what needs to happen when and can track progress easily.
See more gantt chart templates for event planners
There are lots of ways to build a product roadmap. Our Excel product roadmap template makes it easy to communicate and track major release phases for your product on a continuous timeline.
Use this gantt chart template to launch new features and functionality on time while looking ahead to the next big thing on your product release schedule. It’s great for setting expectations for work that must be completed—or features that will be delivered—during each release and creating alignment between cross-functional departments.
See more gantt chart templates for software developers
If you want to spend less time building spreadsheets, check out some of our other Excel project management templates. Here are a few you can download for free:
Gantt charts that are simple, beautiful, and super-easy to manage and update is exactly what TeamGantt was designed from the ground up to do. Let’s walk through the basic steps for creating and using gantt chart templates in TeamGantt.
Follow these easy steps to set up your first project in TeamGantt.
1. Go to teamgantt.com/signup to sign up for your free account to get started.
2. Once you log in, go to My Projects in the sidebar, and click + New Project, then Create New Project.
3. Give your project a name, and choose a project template to get you started if you want. Choose your default project view and the days of the week you want to be able to schedule work in your project. Then click Create New Project.
4. Your project is created, and you’re ready to start adding your tasks!
5. Once you’ve added your tasks to the task list, just click and drag each taskbar to set the dates and duration.
6. If you have tasks that can’t begin until another task is complete, you can add a dependency to your gantt chart to make sure those tasks are always done in the proper order. Simply click the gray dot to the right of the first task, and drag the dependency to the dependent task.
You’re all done! Congratulations on creating your first project in TeamGantt!
In TeamGantt, you can create unlimited gantt chart templates from the projects you build. Here are 2 easy ways to save a project as a template from Gantt view:
Your gantt chart template evolves with your root project so it stays up-to-date.
Using a template to create a new project is as easy as clicking the Template dropdown on the project creation screen and choosing the one you want to use from the template library. No more starting from a blank screen!
Any gantt chart templates you save will be listed under the My Templates section. Once your gantt chart template loads, simply update the tasks and invite your team.
Forget having to keep track of multiple Excel gantt chart files for each project and wasting time making sure all your charts are presentation-ready. TeamGantt makes it easy—and dare we say FUN—to create and manage your projects with shareable online gantt charts.
Here’s a quick peek at how you can save time and headaches making gantt charts and managing projects with TeamGantt compared to Excel:
| Excel | TeamGantt | |
|---|---|---|
| Presentation-quality gantt charts |  | |
| Compatible with Mac & Windows | | |
| Drag & drop scheduling |  | |
| Calendar, task list, & kanban board views | | |
| Track & collaborate on tasks in real time | | |
| Upload important project files | | |
| Share view-only links | | |
| Keep tasks in order with dependencies | | |
| Compare planned vs. actual timelines | | |
| See team availability | | |
| Track hours worked | | |
You can create a beautiful project plan in just minutes with TeamGantt. And because everything happens online, it's easy to track project progress and collaborate with your team in real time.
Sign up for your free account today!
Unfortunately, Excel doesn’t come with a built-in gantt chart template. You’ll need to create a gantt chart manually in Excel, then save it as a template for future project use.
You can save any Excel diagram you make as a template. Simply click File >Save as template to create an Excel gantt chart template you can use again and again to schedule project timelines.
You can customize our Excel templates to view and manage projects over any time period, whether it’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
Follow these simple steps to adjust the time interval of your Excel gantt chart template:
It won’t be a perfect monthly or quarterly picture since some the number of days in a month varies. But this approach should provide a decent visual approximation for your Excel gantt chart.
All of our free gantt chart Excel templates have progress bars built-in. All you have to do is update progress in the Percent Complete column, and Excel will adjust the taskbar on the gantt chart to reflect the current status.
