How to transfer a table into a chart?

Question

I have the following table and I would like to make a representative chart.

                           Start      End        Duration
Implementation of project  01/05/2012 30/04/2014 24
XRD and Polymerisation     01/05/2012 01/06/2012  1
DFT                        01/05/2012 01/11/2012  6
Supervision                01/09/2012 01/03/2014 18
Fund raising               01/02/2013 01/03/2014 13
Proposal writing           01/02/2013 01/03/2014 13
Conferences                01/12/2013 30/04/2014  5
Future post                01/11/2013 30/04/2014  6

Can you help me to make a nice chart?

Answer 1

This can be easily accomplished using MS Excel, or any other spreadsheet program that includes the capability of creating a stacked bar chart.

1. Starting with your earliest date, create a data column for the number for days later each task begins. In your example, Supervision begins 4 days later than the project start. These data points will be your base bar column in your chart, and will be formated with no fill, so they're effectively invisible.
2. Next, add the length of each task (18 days for Supervision) as a second, stacked data series in your chart. Format as desired.
3. Finally, add your data labels for each task and label your x-axis for the dates in your project and you have a quick, spreadsheet based Gantt chart.

Jon Peltier has a huge number of links for creating Gantt charts in excel at his website: http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/GanttLinks.html