Excel Gantt Chart Template: Three Working Versions You Can Download (2026)
An Excel Gantt chart template has one honest job: get you from a task list to a bar-per-task timeline without fighting the chart tools, because Excel does not ship a Gantt chart type. The sheets below do the two standard recipes for you. The full version lays out every task with start, finish, a computed duration and a computed days-from-kickoff offset, which are exactly the two series the stacked-bar method charts. The grid version skips the chart object entirely and marks each week a task touches, ready for one conditional formatting rule to paint into bars.
All three downloads carry the same pre-filled project, a website relaunch that runs 17 tasks across four phases from August 3 to October 9, 2026, because a template full of empty rows teaches nothing about how the math should look. Swap in your own tasks and dates and the duration and offset columns are already wired. The sprint version zooms the same project down to one 2-week build sprint, ten tasks over ten working days.
Plan a project in the browser. No signup.
A working slice of the relaunch plan you can type into right now. Change a date, reword a task, flip a status. Edits live in your tab only and clear when you close it. One click on the signup path turns it into a sheet that keeps, with the real Gantt view behind it.
| Task | Owner | Phase | Start | Finish | Days | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Three Excel Gantt chart templates, free to download
Each file is a working sheet exported from Wisegrid with the full sample project in it, not a blank grid with bold headers. They open in Excel or any .xlsx spreadsheet app. Download whichever matches how you plan, no email required.
Excel Gantt Chart
The full project layout, built for the stacked-bar chart method. Seventeen tasks across Planning, Design, Build and Launch phases, each with an owner, start and finish dates, a Duration column computed inclusively from the two dates, and a Days From Kickoff column that measures each start against the August 3 kickoff. Those last two columns are the offset and length series the Excel recipe charts: select them with the task names, insert a stacked bar, hide the offset series fill, and the bars become a Gantt. In Wisegrid the same sheet renders as a real Gantt view with dependency arrows, no chart building at all.
Gantt Timeline Grid
The no-chart version. The same relaunch rolled up to twelve lines, with ten week columns and an X in every week each task touches, derived from the same start and finish dates the row shows. In Excel, select the week columns and add one conditional formatting rule that fills any cell containing an X, and the marks read as solid bars. It prints clean, survives being pasted into a slide, and anyone can edit it without knowing where the chart settings live. The tradeoff is week-level resolution: fine for a status meeting, too coarse for day-level scheduling.
Two Week Sprint Gantt
The same project zoomed to its first build sprint: ten tasks from sprint planning on day 1 to review and demo on day 10, September 7 to 18. Durations count working days rather than calendar days, and a Starts On Day column places every task on the sprint's ten-day clock, so day 6 means day 6 even with a weekend in between. Use it when the horizon is two weeks and a full project Gantt is more ceremony than the work deserves. It also makes an honest sprint plan to attach to a standup thread.
How to build a Gantt chart in Excel that stays truthful
Start from the task list, not the chart
Write the tasks first, one row each, with an owner and a phase. The sample project keeps it to 17 rows because a Gantt with 80 bars is a wall, not a plan. If a task needs two owners it is two tasks, and if you cannot name a finish date it is not yet a task, it is a phase hiding in one row. The chart at the end can only be as honest as this list.
Compute duration and offset instead of typing them
The template derives Duration as finish minus start plus one, and Days From Kickoff as each start measured against the first task. In Excel those are =B2-A2+1 and =A2-$A$2 written once and filled down. Typed-in numbers drift the first time a date moves; computed ones cannot. In Wisegrid the same columns are =NETDAYS([Start]@row, [Finish]@row) and a NETDAYS offset, live in the download's source sheet.
Chart the offset and duration as a stacked bar
Select task names, the offset column and the duration column, and insert a stacked horizontal bar chart. Format the offset series with no fill and no border so it becomes invisible spacing, and the duration series is left floating at each task's start position. Reverse the category axis so task one sits at the top. That is the entire stacked-bar trick, and it takes about ten minutes the first time.
Or skip the chart and use the timeline grid
The second download marks each of ten week columns a task touches. In Excel, one conditional formatting rule that fills any week cell containing an X turns the marks into bars with no chart object to maintain. When a date changes you move the X marks, which is also the method's weakness: nothing recomputes the marks from the dates for you, so check them whenever a row slips.
Keep dependencies somewhere the chart cannot lie about
An Excel bar chart has no idea that QA cannot start before the build finishes; the bars just sit where the dates put them. Note hard dependencies in a column, and when a predecessor slips, walk every dependent row by hand. This is the single biggest cost of a spreadsheet Gantt, and the reason the live version below draws finish-to-start arrows and recomputes the chain for you.
Update it weekly or admit it is a poster
A Gantt chart that was true three weeks ago is worse than none, because people still believe it. Put ten minutes on the calendar each Friday: update statuses, move slipped dates, and let the computed columns re-derive everything else. The sample sheet ships mid-project on purpose, with early phases complete and the build in progress, so you can see what a maintained one looks like.
How the Excel stacked-bar Gantt actually works
Excel's chart gallery has column, line, pie, bar, area and scatter families, but no Gantt type, so every Excel Gantt chart is a stacked horizontal bar chart wearing a costume. The first series is each task's offset from the project start, formatted invisible. The second is the duration, which then appears to float at the right date. The template's Days From Kickoff and Duration columns are those two series, already computed: the front-end build row, for example, starts 37 days after kickoff and runs 14 days, and both numbers came from its dates, not from anyone's memory.
Two details keep the result readable. Reverse the category axis, because Excel plots the first row at the bottom by default and a plan reads top-down. And set the value axis minimum to zero rather than letting it auto-scale, so day zero is the project kickoff and the bar positions mean what they appear to mean. Neither step changes the data; both change whether the room reads the chart correctly.
Where a spreadsheet Gantt stops scaling
The honest limits show up on schedule changes. When the design sign-off slips three days, the spreadsheet version needs you to find every task that depended on it and move each one by hand, then re-check the chart. Nothing warns you about the ones you missed. There is no critical path, so the question the room actually asks, which slip moves the launch date, gets answered by staring and guessing.
The same sheet opened in Wisegrid is a real Gantt view: bars drawn from the Start and Finish columns, finish-to-start dependency arrows with lead and lag, a critical path highlight, and drag-to-reschedule that writes real dates back into the grid. The downloads exist because sometimes the deliverable is an .xlsx attachment, but the one-click path out of chart maintenance is the same template running live, and the sheet ceiling is 1,000,000 cells, so the plan will outgrow the method long before it outgrows the sheet.
Frequently asked questions
How do you make a Gantt chart in Excel?
With a stacked horizontal bar chart and 3 columns: task name, days from the project start, and duration. Chart all three, format the offset series with no fill so it becomes invisible spacing, and the duration bars float at each task's start. The full template ships both columns already computed, so the build takes about 10 minutes the first time and 2 the second.
Does Excel have a built-in Gantt chart type?
No. Excel's chart gallery has no Gantt type, which is why every Excel Gantt chart is either a disguised stacked bar chart or a conditional-formatting grid. This template ships both routes pre-built: the stacked-bar layout with its 2 computed helper columns, and a 10-week timeline grid where 1 formatting rule turns X marks into bars.
Can an Excel Gantt chart show task dependencies or a critical path?
Not on the chart itself: the bars sit wherever the dates put them, and when 1 predecessor slips you move every dependent row by hand with no warning about the ones you missed. The sample project carries 19 finish-to-start dependencies, and in Wisegrid's Gantt view they render as arrows with a critical path highlight, so the which-slip-moves-launch question has a visible answer.
What formula calculates task duration for a Gantt chart?
In Excel, =B2-A2+1 for inclusive calendar days between a start in A2 and a finish in B2, and =NETWORKDAYS(A2, B2) to count only working days. The template's source sheet computes the same 2 numbers as =NETDAYS([Start]@row, [Finish]@row) and a NETWORKDAYS column, so the front-end build row reads 14 calendar days because its dates say so, not because someone typed 14.
How many tasks and weeks does the sample project cover?
17 tasks across 4 phases, from an August 3 kickoff to an October 9, 2026 finish: 68 calendar days, which the timeline grid covers with 10 week columns. It arrives mid-project, with the planning and design phases complete and the build in progress, so you can see what a maintained chart looks like before you overwrite it with your own plan.
How do you make a 2-week sprint Gantt chart?
Number the sprint's 10 working days and place each task by start day and working-day duration, which is what the sprint variant ships: 10 tasks from planning on day 1 to review and demo on day 10, September 7 to 18. Counting working days matters at this zoom, because a task that spans the weekend is 2 days of work, not 4, and calendar-day math quietly pads the sprint.
Are the downloads really free, and what does the live version cost?
The 3 .xlsx files are free with no email gate. The live version runs on Wisegrid's one plan, $19 per editor per month, with view-only collaborators free, so the stakeholders who only read the Gantt cost nothing. A sheet holds up to 1,000,000 cells, which at this template's 8 columns is a plan far longer than any project should be.
Why do the Excel files show computed values instead of live formulas?
The 2 helper columns arrive as the computed numbers for the sample project, because each spreadsheet app speaks its own formula dialect. Rebuilding them in Excel is 2 formulas filled down, =B2-A2+1 and =A2-$A$2, about a minute of work. Opened in Wisegrid, the sheet keeps its formulas live and the Gantt view redraws itself whenever a date moves.
Run it live instead of in a file.
The downloads above are yours either way. In Wisegrid the same template becomes a working sheet with owner contacts, status dropdowns, reminders, and dashboards. 7-day free trial, no credit card required.