What is your favorite chart to show % progress? It contains all these charts.Īs a bonus, the download workbook also has 5 step tracker to make you awesome in Excel.
For example, the darker a cell color is, the more that particular project is done and vice-versa. In such cases, a color scale (also known as heatmap) can work very well. When you have a lot of items to track, your focus is really on which items are lagging (or leading). Make sure your boss / customers dig them. Make sure you adjust pie icon settings as per your taste. The process is same as traffic light icons. Use either Playbill or Script fonts.Ĭonditional formatting pie charts are a simple alternative to show % progress data. The font & size has impact on how in-cell chart is displayed.Can be handy when making dashboards or reports (where conditional formatting may have limitations).Select the cell and change font to Playbill.You will get a lot of pipe symbols | in this cell.These are simple to setup and works great in many situations where conditional formatting may not be an option. If for some reason you cannot use databars, then rely on in-cell bar charts.
So make sure you set this to 100% for better depiction of progress. By default the maximum value in your data takes 100% of the cell width.Extra step: Adjust maximum bar size to 100% so that you can see relative progress better.Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Data bars.Related: Never show simple numbers in your dashboards Chart #2: Conditional Formatting Data Bars The traffic lights do not look good when printed in black-and-white (or gray scale).
The traffic lights in Excel are not great for color-blind people.Works the same when you have 20 or 200 or 2000 items to track. Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Icon sets.It is very easy to implement and works really well. Data for these chartsįor all these charts, we will use below data: Chart #1: Conditional Formatting Icons + % values Please download example file and keep it handy while reading the rest of this tutorial. So today, lets talk about best charts to show % progress against a goal. At this very moment, if you pay close attention, you can hear mouse clicks of thousands of analysts and managers all over the world making project progress charts. He was so punctual about it, even on days when our coffee machine wasn’t working.Īs you can see, tracking progress is an obsession we all have. Microsoft 365 subscription offers Gantt chart templates designed to help you track project tasks with visual reminders and color-coded categories.Back when I was working as a project lead, everyday my project manager would ask me the same question. Hold CONTROL and click in the chart, and then select Save as Template. To reuse your customized Gantt chart, save it as a template. To change the colors for the chart, click Change Colors. To fine-tune the design, tab through the design options and select one. To add elements to the chart, click the chart area, and on the Chart Design tab, select Add Chart Element. You can customize the Gantt type chart we created by adding gridlines, labels, changing the bar color, and more. Select Format Axis, and under Axis Position, choose Categories in reverse order. Hold the CONTROL key, and select the vertical axis (Tasks). Let’s also reverse the task order so that it starts with Task1. If you don’t need the legend or chart title, click it and press DELETE. In the chart, click the first data series (the Start part of the bar in blue) and then on the Format tab, select Shape Fill > No Fill. Next, we’ll format the stacked bar chart to appear like a Gantt chart. Find out more about selecting data for your chart.Ĭlick Insert > Insert Bar Chart > Stacked Bar chart. Tip: If you don't want to include specific rows or columns of data you can hide them on the worksheet.