Gantt chart Excel template for project management

Written by
Holly Meikle
Project management can be a complex and overwhelming challenge. Organizing, tracking, and managing different projects, budgets, and deadlines can become extremely difficult. Especially when you’re dealing with multiple Excel spreadsheets for each aspect of your process. Although there are many software tools available to help streamline your project management, they’re often extremely costly. What if there was something that could do the same thing, without the hefty price tag? That’s why Sheetgo has created a Gantt chart Excel template specifically designed for project management.

Excel still represents the go-to data management tool. Not only can it store and organize huge amounts of data, but it also offers a variety of analytical tools and features, including Gantt charts. No matter the project size, Gantt charts allow you to visualize your tasks easily, organized by their estimated duration. Let’s explore more benefits of a Gantt chart Excel template, and how you can use the Sheetgo template to streamline and optimize your operations as a project manager.

Why use the Sheetgo Gantt chart Excel template?

Sheetgo provides an entire template workflow that connects all your Excel files and automatically transfers data between them. This template workflow includes 4 Excel spreadsheets: the master sheet, and 3 colleague files.

Firstly, when you assign tasks to your team members in your master sheet. Sheetgo will transfer this task data to the corresponding colleague spreadsheet. In these colleague spreadsheets, each team member can update the progress status for each of their tasks. Then, Sheetgo directly transfers this progress data back to the master sheet, where it is visualized as a Gantt chart. As a result, you have a complete overview of all the project operations, so that you can supervise everything effectively.

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The Sheetgo Gantt chart Excel template also offers these additional benefits:
  • Automated system from start to finish: Not only does this template automate your data transfer, but you can also schedule automatic transfers, resulting in a completely self-sufficient system that always provides you with the latest insights.
  • Avoid human error: As Sheetgo transfers your data automatically, there is no need to manually copy and paste, avoiding any unwanted errors.
  • Scalability: You can add as many collaborator spreadsheets as needed for your department. The workflow can grow as your project grows.
  • Maintain data privacy: You can share spreadsheets with the corresponding collaborators without losing control over the master sheet, which stores all the data.
  • Easy integration: This template integrates with your Excel spreadsheets so that you can easily manage your pre-existing data. Also, you can also integrate data from other departments, which makes it ideal for creating comprehensive reports.
Now that you know the many advantages of using the Gantt chart Excel template in Sheetgo, let’s see how you can install it into your own operations in just a few simple steps.

How to install Sheetgo’s Gantt chart Excel template

Add Gantt chart template to your Drive

Click the button below to install the Gantt chart Excel template. As you can see, you can install the template on Google Drive, OneDrive, Sharepoint, and Dropbox.

The official name of the template is Project management template, and includes a Gantt chart to monitor your team’s progress visually.

Project management

Google Sheets workflow template to allocate tasks, get status updates and track progress.

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Make sure you authorize Sheetgo to access the data on your Excel files. Your data will still be completely private.

Below is the Overview of your template. As you can see, there are the 4 files under the File tab. Go through each file and familiarize yourself with the template’s format. Each file contains sample data, which you can simply replace with your own.

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How to use Sheetgo’s Gantt Chart template in Excel

Now that you have installed the template, it’s time to prepare the template so that it’s ready to share and use!

Step 1: Open master spreadsheet

In the template Workflow, open the master spreadsheet by clicking on the pencil icon, and then Edit File.

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Step 2: Fill out inputs

You will see how there are three tabs: Instructions, WBS, and Gantt.

Go to the Instructions tab and fill out the following inputs: Start date, Gantt view mode, and Week start day. This will customize the template to your specific needs.

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Step 3: Enter your project, subproject, and task data

In the WBS tab, enter all relevant information for each project, subproject, and task in their corresponding column.

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Please note: The gray cells contain pre-written formulas, so you shouldn’t edit these under any circumstances. If you do, you risk the functionality of the entire workflow.

Step 4: Enter task dependencies

Now that you entered the project, subproject, and task, define the dependency for each.

  • Start-to-start: The selected task can start while the dependent one is still in progress.
  • Finish-to-start: The selected task can only start when the dependent one has finished.
Use the drop-down menu in Column H to select the dependency type.
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Step 5: Select task duration and assign owner

Enter the duration of the task in column J, and the co-worker responsible for carrying out the task in Column K.

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Step 6: Rename the team member spreadsheets

As mentioned previously, this template contains sample data, and so it includes example names. Replace these names with those of your co-workers responsible for the tasks you have added to the master sheet.

Go to Workflow, click on the File tab and click on More options (⋮) > Rename for each colleague spreadsheet.

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Please note: In case you have more than 3 team members you wish to add to the workflow, you can add more colleague spreadsheets.

You can find the steps for this process in the next section.

Step 7: Run workflow

Now that you have prepared the spreadsheets for your operations, it’s time to update the connections to transfer your new data.

Click the Run button in Workflow to transfer the tasks in your master sheet to your colleagues’ spreadsheets.

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Step 8: Share with colleagues

It’s time to share each colleague spreadsheet with the corresponding team member. Open the spreadsheet by double-clicking on it.

Click the green Share button located in the toolbar, enter the email address of your team member, and click Send. They now have access.

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Step 9: Team members enter status progress

Each team member can now enter the progress status of the task in Column G of their individual colleague spreadsheet.

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Step 10: Automate the workflow

You must schedule automatic transfers to receive the latest insights. If any of your team members update their spreadsheet, your master sheet will also be updated.

Head to Workflow, and click on Automate in the bottom-left corner of the screen.

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Change the automation settings – you can choose the hours, the time, and the frequency of updating.

Once finished, click Save.

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Now that you’ve scheduled automatic transfers, the Gantt chart tab of your master sheet will receive the latest progress status of your collaborators.
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How to add more team member spreadsheets to your project management template

Have more than 3 team members in your project management process? The Sheetgo template is completely scalable, so you can easily add more colleague templates into your workflow.

Let’s see how you can quickly add more team members:

Step 1: Make a copy of the spreadsheet

Go to your online storage folder where you chose to download your template. For this example, I’ve saved the template to my DropBox account.

In order to duplicate a spreadsheet, you must select one of the colleague spreadsheets, right-click, and press Copy to. In the pop-up, make sure you choose to copy the spreadsheet to the same folder you’re currently in.

Once finished, click Copy here.

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Rename the spreadsheet copy as your team member’s name by right-clicking and selecting Rename.
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Step 2: Duplicate the team member spreadsheet in Sheetgo

Head back to your workflow on the Sheetgo web app. Click on the Connections tab. Then, select the More options (⋮) button next to one of the WBS connections and click Duplicate.

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On the duplicated connection, go to the Filter data section and replace the value of the condition with your team member’s name.

In this example, I will replace “Emanuel” with “Sandra”.

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Scroll down to the Destination section and click Change file. Add the copied file you created in the first step. Don’t forget to change the tab name to WBS, too.
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Please note: Ignore the warning message “Tab name already in use”.

Complete your changes by clicking Finish and save.

Step 3: Add another source file in Sheetgo

Go to Connections > Report from collaborators and select More options (⋮) > Edit.

Click on +Add another source file to add the new colleague spreadsheet.

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Don’t forget to select Input status from the dropdown menu in the File tab, before clicking Finish and Save.
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Now you have successfully added a new team member to your workflow! For more detailed instructions on how to do this, take a look at our Project management template support page.

Project management template in Excel

And there you go! With the Sheetgo Gantt chart Excel template, you now have complete control over your various project tasks. Not only will you receive the latest task progress statuses from your team members automatically, but you can visualize these in the form of a Gantt chart. The entire project management process is automated for your benefit from start to finish!

If you are looking for more Excel-based workflow templates to add to your operations, check out this post on the Sheetgo automated timesheet Excel template.

Alternatively, take a look at the related blog posts down below.

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