Build a Gantt Chart in Excel That Actually Updates Itself

A Gantt chart in Excel looks impossible until you learn the stacked bar trick. If your project plan is sitting in a spreadsheet with dates, task names, and status columns, you are one chart away from turning it into a visual timeline your whole team can actually read. This tutorial walks through building a Gantt chart from scratch using a stacked bar chart, adding a Data Validation dropdown for task status, setting up conditional formatting that auto-highlights overdue tasks, and a trick with the TODAY function that adds a moving vertical line showing where you are right now. Timestamps below. 📂 Practice file: [https://github.com/dataroos/excel-pra...] 00:00 Your project plan 00:37 Clean up the status column 01:40 Duration and chart labels 02:37 Build the Gantt chart 03:09 Format the chart 04:46 Auto-highlight overdue tasks 06:00 Bonus: the TODAY() line