Why we use project tracker in excel

A project tracker in Excel is a versatile tool for efficient project management. It helps organize tasks, track progress, allocate resources, and manage risks. By providing real-time visibility into project status and facilitating communication and collaboration, project trackers enable better decision-making and improve project outcomes. Additionally, they serve as repositories of historical data, offering insights for future projects. Overall, Excel project trackers streamline project management processes and enhance productivity.

Creating project tracker in excel

The first step is to list the projects you want to track in the first column of the table and the number of steps or tasks it will take to complete each project across the top row like this. Once you have all your projects and tasks listed, the next step is to insert checkboxes in the task columns. To do this, select the empty cells in the task columns, navigate to the Insert tab, and select Checkbox. As you can see, a checkbox was automatically inserted into each cell, and now we can quickly check off tasks once they are complete. The last step is to create a progress bar in the last column of the table that visualizes each project’s progress depending on how many checkboxes are checked. Now, you may be wondering, how the heck do you create a progress bar that visualizes checkboxes with no numerical values. Well, the best thing about these checkboxes is that they set the cell equal to true if the checkbox is checked and false if the checkbox is unchecked. This is so valuable because it allows us to reference them in formulas and calculate values depending on whether a checkbox is checked or not. (Watch Now in YouTube)

Steps to create project tracker in excel

To create a progress bar, we can create rep bar charts that visualize the number of cells that are checked or in formula terms, equal to true. If you are unfamiliar with rep bar charts, there are many in-cell bar charts that are created using the rep function and the stem cell font. To create a rep bar chart, type equals rep, followed by an open parentheses, and enter the bar symbol in double quotations as the text argument. Now we just need to enter the number we want to visualize as the number times argument. Because we are visualizing each project’s progress, we need to enter the number of checkboxes that are checked. To calculate the number of checkboxes that are checked for each project, we can use the Count If function to count the number of cells that are equal to true. Just enter Count If and select the first row of checkboxes as the range argument. Next, enter true as the criteria argument to count the number cells within the range that are equal to true, and then enter the function. Double check and make sure that the rep function returns a bar for each checkbox that is checked, and then format the value as a mini bar chart by updating the font to Stencil.

As you can see here, by updating the font, we created a mini bar chart, but it’s too small. We want the progress bar to reach the far right end of the cell when all of the checkboxes are checked. We can make the progress bars longer by scaling the number times argument by a larger number. For example, to scale the number times argument, I’m going to just multiply the COUNTIF function by 10. As you can see, the progress bar now fills across the entire cell when all of the checkboxes are checked. If your progress bar still doesn’t fit the entire cell, you can multiply the number times argument by a higher number to make the progress bar longer, a smaller number to make the progress bar shorter, or adjust the width of the column equal to the length of the bar. It doesn’t matter what you scale the number times argument by as long as the same number scales each project. Now that we’ve created our first progress bar, we can fill the formula down the column using the autofill handle to create the rest. And that’s it. We’ve officially created an Excel project tracker with progress bars that automatically update when tasks are completed.

This method works great if each project has the same number of tasks. If the projects have a different number of tasks to create project tracker in excel, this method will not work because the progress bar is It will all be different lengths when the projects are completed. If your projects vary in the number of tasks, you will have to calculate the % of tasks completed for each project and then create the progress bars using data bars. To calculate the % of tasks completed for each project, we need to divide the number of checkboxes checked by the total number of checkboxes. Once again, we can use the Count If function to count the number of checkboxes checked by entering Count If, selecting the first row tasks as the range and setting the criteria equal to true. Now we can divide this by the total number of checkboxes using the COUNTA function to count the number of non-blank cells. I’m going to enter the divide sign, followed by the COUNTA function, and then select the first row of tasks as the value argument. Now we can just enter the function to calculate the % of tasks that are completed for the first project and then fill the formula down the column to calculate the remaining.

The last step would be to add the data bar to visualize the % complete by opening the conditional formatting drop-down on the Home tab, selecting data bars, and choosing your color of choice. Now we have a progress bar along with the % complete for each project that automatically updates when tasks are completed, even though each project has a different number of tasks.