How to build an excel bar chart to reflect percentage completed

Put your % complete in one cell (say cell A1), then put =100-A1 in cell A2.
Select them and insert a horizontal stacked bar chart.
Tell it the series are in rows.
Right click on the white part and hit 'format chart area' change the background and border to nothing.
Right click on the gray part and hit 'format plot area' change stuff to none again.
Right click on the chart hit 'chart options' turn everything off.
Right click on each colored bar and hit 'format series' and make it the color you want.

See the sample. progress-bar.xls

Thanks Tommy

How do I make it so the progress bar is in months for instance. Different users are going to be updating their chart each month.

jan      5% finished
feb      10% finished
mar      15
apr      25
may      25
jun      50
jul      60
aug      75
sep      
oct      
nov      
dec      

I put the data in the xls file you sent (attached). put in a stacked bar, not sure how to put the "series in rows". Maybe if I could get that bit to work I could manipulate the data, but...then again... progress-bar.xls

Like this?

For reference, I added the =100-x formulas
I did all the formatting suggested in my first post except I left the chart area white and the Y axis on.
I right clicked on the Y axis and turned off all the lines and tick marks and on the scale tab put the 'categories in reverse order'.
progress-bar2.xls

Hi Tommy

Sorry to be annoying. What I want to have is all of the months there where the users can enter their percentage complete, but I only want to show one progress line.

Sorry to be annoying. Thanks for adding that formula and for formatting the one you sent back. See how the chart has all the months displayed... so January would appear as is, then february would appear over the top of january as further, then march would show over the top of february, etc, etc, So the bar is all set up for the year and all the user has to do is pop in their data each month and the progress bar will reflect that.

So it will be a running record in the data file as well (whereas I think with your first example, it is just the updated figure for each month (ie you lose the last month's figure when updated).

hope this makes sense.

In that one that you sent me bac

I'm not sure exactly what you mean then. I tried a couple more ideas. If those still aren't right, try explaining exactly what you want to see or sketch it in MS Paint or something.
progress-bar3.xls

Hello,

it's a bit hard to create a chart without your data.

I've mocked up a scenario that tries to mirror the screenshot.

You need a stacked horizontal bar chart, and use the XY Chart labeler to display the completed percentage.

I'm happy to elaborate on the details if you feel that this is something you want to pursue.

cheers, teylyn
Book1.xlsx

sorry, I didn't mean to post this in orange. There's currently a bug in the system, defaulting to administrative replies for badgers. Please read the comment as a "blue" one.

cheers, teylyn

Also, please disregard the X axis labels. If required, they can be set to month names, although that will need a bit more work.

I'm happy to guide you through it, though. I've done lots of Gantt charts in that fashion, and am fairly confident that what you want to show can be achieved with a basic Excel chart, if the data is laid out to suit your needs.

cheers, teylyn

Thanks, friendly mod!

Hi teylyn, yes, this is the sort of thing I'm after. I didn't realise how complicated this would be!
Is it possible to have it in the format of actual months.

At this stage I don't have any data I've just been asked to create the chart so that the users can fill in their progress (percentage) completed month by month with the flexibility to be started and ended wherever required. So, from what I can see your chart does this, but is it possible to show the horizonat axis by month eg Jan, Feb?

I've attached your file back with a couple of comments and a Months complete for week ending bit where I'd imagine the user would enter the date.
 Progress-Chart.xlsx

Teylyn's online and her graphs were closer to what you wanted so I'll bow out of the discussion for now. I leave you in capable hands.

Thanks Tommy - your chart would be good if we could put an if statement in the chart segment "if zero than chart segment fill = nothing, else fill chart segment fill = red" but can't do that as far as I know.

Thanks Teylyn:

Thanks for pointing out the manually versus current date accuracy issue - I hadn't thought of that - but you are very much correct.

I shall now have a look, a read and a 'fiddle' with chart and try and digest and make sense of it all!

You can, of course, add data to compare actual vs. plan.

See attached for a rather crude version. Can be fine-tuned. Enter actual progress in the yellow cells of the data table

cheers, teylyn
Copy-of-Progress-Chart2.xlsx

Brilliant explanation

Hi Teylyn

Thank you so much for your wonderful instructions. Through your instructions I was able to recreate the Gantt Chart, so I'm very happy.

Thanks again!

Glad to help. Thanks for the grade!

The comment on 11/11/10  regarding the chart.  The chart was helpful but is there a way I can get step by step details so I can duplicate for my purposes?

Hello, you should start a new question. Link to this one and please refer to the post number. With my regional settings, I see no comment that was posted on 11/11.