Creating an Excel stacked bar chart similar to Microsoft Project’s Timeline

Question

I’m trying to create a simple stacked bar chart similar to the Timeline found in Microsoft Project, showing the duration (based on start/finish dates) of various project phases.  However, I want to be able to show multiple stacked bars, with each stacked bar containing the duration of the same phases, but for a different project.

I’ve searched the web for a solution, but I end up landing on sites showing how to create a Gantt chart in Excel, which is not what I want.

Can someone in this forum kindly point me to a URL that shows the steps for creating the type of chart I’ve described above?  Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Answer 1

Hello,

how about a data sample with 3 to 5 projects and a manually mocked up chart using the drawing tools?

Charting soooo depends on the underlying data that it's really hard to show how to do things without context.

Conceptually, if you want to have gaps  between stacked bars, then you need these to be data in the source table and format these data points to be invisible. 

In this table, the source data shows a date as a start date, then the number of days for project phases and the number of days for gaps between project phases. These numbers may need to be derived with formulas from elsewhere in the spreadsheet, subtracting Start Date from End Date to arrive at the number of days.

Answer 2

I cannot see the image, I'm afraid. But regardless, I think I know what you mean. By default, Excel will only show the secondary Y axis and you have to take active steps to show the secondary X axis, too. Steps:

• click the chart
• on the Chart Tools - Layout ribbon click the Axes drop down
• select "Secondary Horizontal Axis" > "Show Default Axis"
• format the axis as described above. 

If you use a line chart, make sure that the X axis is a date axis. You can also use a XY Scatter chart for the line, with the date values on the X axis.