Tracking how much of the planned activity, progress or goals have been completed is a crucial task in any project.
Why?
It enables project managers to allocate resources in a way that minimizes costs and maximizes value. Besides, it promotes efficiency and ensures a project is completed within the set time frame.
To track milestones achieved, you need the best charts in the business, which are Gauge Charts, Overlapping Bar Charts, and Radial Charts.
These Progress Bar Charts are amazingly easy to read and interpret, even for non-technical audiences.
So how can you access a ready-made Progress Bar Chart in Excel?
Excel is one of the popular visualization tools among project management professionals. However, Progress Bar in Excel is pretty basic, which means you have to spend more time editing them to fit within your requirements.
You have an option of installing an add-in into your Excel to access ready-to-use and visually appealing work progress charts.
In this blog, you’ll discover:
Before we jump right into the heart of the blog, let’s define the chart.
Progress Bar Charts are visualization designs that display the progress made in a task, activity or project. You can use these charts to monitor and prioritize your objectives, providing critical data for strategic decision-making.
The Progress bar in Excel uses filled bars to display how much of the planned activity or goal has been completed.
There are different types of progress bar charts that can be used for displaying progress. Charts shown in this blog are created by ChartExpo which is a Chart Add-in for Excel.
An Overlapping Bar chart is best-suited in comparing two distinct variables. An Overlapping Bar Chart is more valuable than the Stacked Bar Chart, especially if your goal is to display comparison insights.
The visualization design is similar to a standard Stacked Bar Chart. However, unlike a Stacked Diagram, its composite variables that contribute to the whole, start at the baseline.
Besides, the chart requires three data columns or rows from your data set one for categories, one for the series in each category, and one for values.
The chart is more valuable than the Grouped Bar Chart because it uses color strategically to display comparison insights. More so, you can leverage the chart to display insights into current progress against the benchmark.
A Gauge Chart is one of the most commonly used progress charts for visualizing progressive values. Besides, it’s also known as a speedometer chart.
The chart looks like a speedometer or a dial (in most cases) with a needle pointing to a certain value over the pivot point. The dial usually has different colors that divide the scale into several parts.
The use of contrasting colors has profound effects on our brains to easily identify “target” and “achieved”.
A Radial Bar Chart is a version of Progress Bar Charts plotted on a polar coordinate system rather than on a Cartesian one. A Radial Chart is also called a Circular Bar Chart.
This chart shares immense similarities with the multilayered Donut Chart. A version of the Classical Bar Chart. In other words, interpreting this chart is just as easy as getting insights from the Bar Visualization Designs.
Each bar on the outside gets relatively longer than the preceding one. In addition, each bar has a varying radius and angle.
Like a bar chart, the bars in this chart represent the changes in variables in your data. So the sizes of the almost circular bars depict the magnitude of change in variables. Let’s analyze the progress of the sales by the team using an easy-to-use Radial chart maker.
This progress chart is specially provided by ChartExpo to use in Excel. You can see the results side by side and also can see the difference between them in the same visualization.
If the difference is positive it will appear as the green color and if it will be negative it will appear as red color. These colors, sorting of data and other properties are all customizable.
Have you installed ChartExpo yet in your Excel? If not then click on the link below and install it in your desired tool.
A Progress Chart is significant, especially in tasks that require continuous monitoring and evaluation. These charts use bars to show the growth of a variable under study.
To visualize your data using Progress Bar Charts, you need a tool. The best visualization tool should have the following attributes, namely:
To have a seamless experience in visualizing your data, you need a flexible tool.
The aesthetics of an online charting tool comes in handy when choosing the right data visualization tool for your work. Yes, aesthetics may not have any functional value, but it adds spice to your data stories.
A tool that allows you to collaborate with others is very handy, especially in the pandemic period. It would help if you had a tool to share and collaborate with others in visualization tasks.
Keep reading because, in the coming section, we’ll be recommending the best excel add-in you should download and install in Excel to access the ready-to-go Progress Bar Charts.
Besides, the add-on (mentioned above) meets all the attributes we’ve just highlighted above.
Excel does not natively support all types of Progress Bar Graphs. And this means you have to plot the chart from scratch using other tools.
You have an option of installing a particular add-in called ChartExpo to access ready-to-use Progress Bar visualizations.
A Progress Bar in Excel such as an overlapping bar chart uses different lengths and colors to track the pattern of variables. Its rectangular bars are oriented horizontally or vertically. One axis depicts categories, while the other shows numerical values related to two variables.
Take a look at the table below.
Can you provide meaningful insights by just taking a look at the table below?
| Projects | Expectation | Progress |
| Breeze | 100 | 66 |
| Point | 100 | 88 |
| Mecha | 100 | 60 |
| Synergy | 100 | 88 |
| Zen | 100 | 52 |
Note the difference after visualizing the data above.
ChartExpo is a data visualization tool that goes above and beyond data.
Using a complete set of tools (below):
You can easily create Work Progress Bar Charts that are simple, easy, and clear to read.
The tool comes with a library with many advanced charts and graphs. Did we mention you can easily export charts to make stunning social media reports, sales reports, and goal projections easily using a wide range of ready-to-go charts?
ChartExpo is for anyone who needs to create data visualizations and visual graphics for various purposes, such as blogs and reports.
But most of all, ChartExpo is for professionals and business owners who need to create beautiful excel charts and graphs without design skills.
Once you’ve installed ChartExpo in Excel, follow the steps below
You will see a list of charts available.
How to create Progress Bar Chart in Excel should never be a complex or overwhelming task. Use ChartExpo to create Progress Bar Chart in Excel in a few clicks as shown above.
A title is one of the key pieces of information you need to help your audience understand the context of your data story.
To add a title to the Chart, follow the easy steps below:
Now you have learned how easily you can show the progress of different projects or tasks in excel.
In the following video, you can learn how to create Overlapping Bar Chart in excel. You can use this chart to show the progress of different tasks and projects.
Charts, such as Progress Bar in Excel, are incredibly significant to businesses as they promote data-driven decision-making.
Visualization charts can convey much information faster than spreadsheets and tables full of numbers. And this means they empower business people to make reliable and informed decisions.
But which kind of chart or graph should you choose?
If you click on the chart option in your spreadsheet program, you’ll likely be presented with many styles. They all look visually appealing, but which one works best for your data and audience?
Not all visualizations are for every data.
Date-based data is best visualized using Line Charts. On the other hand, Pie Charts are mostly used to display part-to-whole relationships in raw data. Similarly, you can use Sankey Diagram to show the flow of data and comparison charts to compare different dimensions and categories.
The following factors should guide your preference:
Check out below how your business can benefit from charts.
Charts, such as Progress Bar in Excel, can help your business focus on the areas that require urgent attention.
We naturally interpret visual content faster than numbers and texts. Visualization designs, such as Work Progress Charts act as a bridge between raw data and decision-making in today’s world.
Business charts and graphs can help you gain insights into vast and bulky data sets. Making sense of the insights puts you in a strategic position to spot red flags or progress.
A Progress Bar Chart is a visualization design you can leverage to display the progress made in a task or project. The visualization design is best suited to monitor and prioritize your objectives, providing critical data for strategic decision-making.
It uses filled bars to display milestones achieved in a project.
Progress Bar Charts are amazingly easy to read and interpret. You can use the chart to track the milestones achieved against a particular target or deadline.
The visualization design uses a series of red and green bars to depict decline and growth, respectively.
Tracking how much of the planned activity or goals have been completed is a crucial undertaking in any project.
And this is because it enables project management professionals to allocate resources to minimize costs and maximize value. Also, ensures a project is completed within the set time frame.
To track milestones achieved in a project, you need the best charts in the business, which is where the Progress Bar in Excel comes in.
Progress Bar Charts are amazingly easy to read and interpret due to their minimalist design.
So how can you access ready-made Work Progress Charts?
Excel should not be your go-to visualization tool if you want to leverage the chart for in-depth insights. The spreadsheet application lacks ready-to-use and visually appealing Stacked Bar Charts.
How to create Progress Bar Chart in Excel should never be a complex or overwhelming task.
We recommend you install third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, into your Excel to access ready-made and visually appealing Progress Charts.
ChartExpo is an Excel-based add-in with an insightful and easy-to-interpret Progress Bar Chart, plus many more advanced visualization designs. You don’t need programming or coding skills to visualize your data using the tool in your Excel.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access ready-made and visually appealing Progress Bar Charts for your data story.
How much did you enjoy this article?
Are you looking for an efficient way to analyze your financial statements? Click here to learn how to analyze financial statements in Excel.
This is your guide if you need to know how to learn from data. Learn how to use quantitative data analysis methods to analyze your survey results.
Here, you will learn how to do spend reporting in Excel. This guide covers everything you need to know, from what spend analysis is to why it's important.
