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Project Scheduling with Excel

For the "I Hate Microsoft Project" crowd some new hope glittered today with a couple of posts on making Project schedules and charts in Excel. The secret is using an xy chart with error bars (my version uses formulas and conditional formatting and can do resource profiling but doesn't look nearly as clean. The post and example files are at Process Trends

Then Dick Kusleika chimed in and added progress lines. His example is here Daily Dose of Excel. A couple other approaches are referenced in his comments as well.

Excel is immensely useful... but it isn't a substitute for a real scheduling tool. Sorry Project haters.

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  • Comments (1)

    Julien Deflassieux:

    Dear Sir or Madam,
    I am trying to have as a finish date the actual date of the day so that each time I open msproject, I have the gantt chart bar increasing automatically (the finish date will be entered manually and the bar stopped at the desired date). It should greatly improve the global vision of delays occuring in tasks. I have tried the following without success :
    right click finish column, customize field, then type finish #1, formula (now())) and finally use formula. I have tried this with both finish column and duration column without any success. I would be so very greatful if you could provide a solution for this matter and apologize if this "comments" section has another purpose than to post questions.
    Thanks in advance,

    Julien

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