Create Excel Gannt Chart Program Plan

Excel, Gannt Chart, Program Plan, resource plan, integration plan

1. What is Blue Excel?
Blue Excel is a powerful Excel Addin. It is designed to make program Gannt
Chart and embedded a demo for easy learning. Excel is often used to make
program plan instead of Microsoft Project due to it is familiar by most people.
Blue Excel provides faster way to create program Gannt Chart plan. It
supports plan based on week, working day or calendar date. You can create
task bar by input start/end date or by graphically way. You can move, shrink or
extend the task bar which makes schedule adjustment easier. You can set task
bar color and create connector between tasks which make its easy to
understand task priority and dependency. Task information can be shown in
the task bar. Precondition and detail information can be shown in front or after
the task bar. All these make the task easy to read. You can also customize the
color of text and task bar. Using excel you can hide/unhide areas, filter tasks,
set color of the text, add comment, add column, add shape, group rows and
so on. All these excel embedded features make you easy to manage your plan
and don't need to learn a new tool. Blue Excel also supports integration plan
and resource plan making. You can create task bar graphically, move, shrink
or extend the task bar easily. Add detail information to the task bar is
supported. Limited text information on text bar is no longer an issue.
2. How to create an Excel Plan?

Example of Excel Gannt Chart plan created by Blue Excel

Refer following links for more detail:

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http://www.smartxyz.com
A. Start plan tool bar

Plan Tool Bar

Button

Press F5 or press Plan Tool bar button on the menu to pop up the Plan
Tool Bar.

Plan Tool Bar

B. Create the template.

Create a new Excel file. Click to create template.

Select the plan type, according task plan sheet will be created.

Gannt Chart by week is the Gannt Chart template based on week.

Gannt Chart by week day is the Gannt Chart template based on working
days.
Gannt Chart by Calendar is the Gannt Chart template based on calendar
date.
Integration Plan is the template for integration.
Prototype Plan is the template for resource allocation.

C. Change template
Click the configuration button to show the configuration dialog. This is used to set the start
date and end date of the template.

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 Configuration Dialog

For example the start date and end date of the template is 2013-3 and 2013-22. You can
change it to the actual start date and end date you will use for your plan. The start date and
end date shows the period of the plan. Change it on the configuration dialog.
For example, change end date to 2013-27.

After set up the configuration, click [Create Template] button to generate template. It will
remove all Gannt Bars in the bar area, also it will regenerate the timeline according the start
date and end date in configuration. Following the end date of the timeline changed to 2013-
27.

[Update Timeline]- This will only regenerate the timeline. Task bars and all
shapes on the sheet will not be removed. This is useful if later you want to
extend the end date of the timeline.
You can also choose to show the progress on task bar or not. The progress will
be shown as percentage on the task bar, if you select this option.

D. Edit/Add tasks
Edit the task description. Input the start and end date of the task.
To add a new task just add one line and input the information of the task.
To delete a task, just delete the line in excel.

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After task start date and end date input, the task bar will be draw
automatically.
For by week plan, two date formats are supported. 1. 2014-1 year-week 2.
2014/4/2 year/month/day.
Date auto fill, for by week task plan, date auto completed is supported. For
example, if you input 4, then it will use current year to auto fill it. The result is
like 2014-4.
For end date, if you input +3, it will be auto filled as start date +3. For start
date, if you input -3, it will be auto filled as end date -3. This only support
2014-1, year-week format.

If the input date is not correct, for example the end date is less than start date
or it is out of timeline, then it will be marked as red. You need correct then go
ahead.

You can also use formula for date input. For week plan you use "=I19". To add weeks to a
date, you can use "=DateAddP(I20,3)". To reduce weeks you can use "=DateAddP(I20,-3)".
If the start date or end date is formula, the date will be highlighted. After date formula
changed, , you can use [F5] to update all the task bars. Make sure all task bars updated
according the change.

You can also press to draw all task bars.

Press for press F4 to draw selected rows only.

Task bars drawn

Task description can be separated by "-", the text before "-" will be shown on the Gannt Bar.
You can also edit task description directly in the task bar, the information will be automatically
updated to the task description cell.

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You can also fill the precondition and detail information of the task. The precondition will be
shown in front of the task bar. The detail information will be shown after the task bar.
You can input precondition in precondition column , or just in front of the task bar. You can
input detail information in the detail column or just in the cell next the task bar.
This is quite useful. In some case, the task bar is too short to show the key message of the
bar, detail information is a supplement. Precondition and show the precondition of the task, all
these make the plan easier to read and understand.

You can also set the color of the task bar. Set color of the cell in front of the task, which
marked as color column, then the task bar color will be same on the color of the cell.
You can also insert columns before the end date column, to add additional
information.
You can also set the default color of precondition, detail information and
default color of the task bar. Following is an example to change the color of
precondition, detail information and task bar.

When select a taskbar, the weeks or days of the task and the start/end time of
the task will be highlighted on the timeline like following picture.

The selected row is marked as following like Task A:

This is useful when select a shape task bar.

E. Show/Hide columns and customized scroll

You can show/hide columns by the button on the sheet.

PreCondition-
Click PreCondition-
the button to show or hide Precondition column. If the column was
F:G F:G
shown, then the text is highlighted.
You can also define the button you like by yourself. Copy the button and
change the text. The text before - is the description. The text after - is the
columns which will be controlled. You can input F:G to control multi columns.

WCol-W
Define the column to be scroll to.
Col-This can be any reminder text.
Click the shape button can scroll to the specified column immediately. This
makes the plan easy to be read.
You can copy the shape and customize the column to be scroll to by yourself.

F. Create connector to show the dependency

You can also create a connector to show the dependency of the tasks.
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Select the start task by selecting the task bar, then press Ctrl and select the
end task bar.
Press to create the connector.

G. Change task bars

Sometime input the start date and end date of a task is not a fast way.
You can create a task by select an area directly.

For task F select the cell from week 8 to week 14, click to create the task bar directly. The
start date and end date will be changed accordingly.

You can also move the task bar.

Select the task bar, click to move the task bar right or left.
You can also extend or shrink the task bar by one cell width.
[LeftExtend]- Left extend the task bar.

[LeftShrink]- Left shrink the task bar.

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 [MoveLeft]- Move Task bar to left.

[MoveRight]- Move Task bar to right.

[RightShrink]- Right shrink the task bar.

[RightExtend]-Right extend the task bar

H. Multi tasks on one line

Multi tasks on one line

Sometime, you need show multi tasks on one line. This is easy to understand
the sequence of the tasks, also this can save the space to show tasks and
make the plan more concise.
Blue Excel supports to make plan this way. Select an area, press to create a
task bar by shape.
Actually there are two kind bars supported by blue excel, one is the cell
merge bar. Which is controlled by the start and end date. And another is
shape bar, which is not controlled by start and end date. You can control it by
moving and dragging the bar directly.
For this shape task bar, sometime you want to add some information in the
cell beside the bar and dont want the row be redrawn when press F4. You can
input text like `hello or ~hello, make sure ` or ~ is ahead of the text ,
then this text will not be removed when redraw the bar.
If the row only include shape task bars and dont need be redrawn, you can
input m in color column. Then the row will not be redrawn and your added
information will not be cleared.
When you use following to move the bar, the information beside the bar will
be moved accordingly which make the plan very easy to read.
Create as much bars as you want on one line. Input task description on the
bar and change the color of the task bar to make it easy to be understood.

For this shape task bar, you can easily adjust it too. Select the task bar, you
can use above button to move the bar left or right, shrink or extend the bar
horizontally.
For this shape task bar, you can also move the task bar up or down. Shrink or
extend the bar vertically.
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I. Add comment to the task.
Add comment of a task bar. The information shown in the task bar is too little
to address all you want. You can add comment for a task bar. Press F6 or to
show the comment dialog, add comment to the task.
,
The task bar with comment will be shown as this, with are red flag on the top

corner.
For a shape task bar, you can also add comment to the task bar. The task bar
with comment will be shown as below. The text will be attached with #.For
this no comment, there is no # attached.

The Task A#
comment dialog of the task bar is same as above. In order to delete the
task bar and its comment together, you need click on the plan tool bar to
delete it.

You can keep the dialog open and select another cell or shape, current information will be
auto saved. New selected cell or shape detail information will be shown.
You can also change size of the dialog to make it easy for view.
Count is the cells of current selected task or shape task. For a week plan, this
means the weeks needed for the task.

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3. Integration Plan

Actually, the integration plan uses the shape bar only to make an integration
plan.
Select the area to create task bar then press to create the task bar.
Definitely you can leverage the buttons on plan tool bar to move the task bar
or shrink/extend the task bar. You can also add detail information in the cell
beside the bar, when you move the bar, the information will move accordingly.

You can also create connector for task bars. Select one task bar and press
Ctrl to select another task bar, press to create connector. Once you move
the task bar the connector will also move with the task bar.
The important thing is that you can add comment for the task bar by F6 or
. So you can add as much as information as possible to the task bar, which
make it easy to be understand.
4. Resource Plan

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 Example of resource plan

Resource plan also uses the shape bar only to make the plan.
It use vertical layout to make sure you have more text shown on the task bar.
Select the area to create task bar then press to create the task bar.
Definitely you can leverage the buttons on plan tool bar to move the task bar
or shrink/extend the task bar. You can also add detail information in the cell
beside the bar, when you move the bar, the information will move accordingly.

5. Others

Besides Gannt Chart, Blue Excel provides a lot free tools such as: Quick way to
filter the selected column. Quick way to run frequently used command. Quick
way to run macros. Merge cells content into one cell. Find an item between
files. Check difference between files. Quick switch between files. Shortcut to
set color. Mark cells with same value in same color. Filter rows according the
value in current cell. Extract number. Extract text. Add character. Reverse
text. Remove space. Count characters. Convert value to text. Remove
duplicate rows, cells. Remove ranges and so on.

Quick Tool Bar

Button

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Press F7 or Quick Tool Bar Button to show the quick tool bar.

Quick Tool Bar

If you want learn more, please go to http://www.smartxyz.com to find more
information.
6. Free Plan template

Click windows start menu to open the free task plan template. [Start]-[All Programs]-[Blue
Excel]-[Free Plan]. Then refer the [help] sheet of the template for help.
You only need input the start date and end date, the task bar will be auto
drawn. Date forma is like 15-9 year-week.

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