{"id":1058,"date":"2016-02-01T11:05:24","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T11:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2016-05-07T15:23:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-07T15:23:11","slug":"how-to-make-an-activity-timeline-in-excel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=1058","title":{"rendered":"How To Make An Activity Timeline in EXCEL (Revised)"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do you produce a timeline of recurring activity types easily using EXCEL? \u00a0I had some trouble getting EXCEL to do this so I am sharing my technique here. \u00a0I use this in my research to characterize the engineering design process of different students as they do a LEGO robotics open ended engineering task.<\/p>\n

Let’s say you have this data (see below).<\/p>\n

\"data\"<\/p>\n

\"data\"<\/a>\"data\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Select the Start and Code columns including the header. \u00a0Produce a marked scatter chart. \u00a0That produces this chart. \u00a0It is what we basically want but the duration of each activity is not shown. \u00a0Delete the legend marked “Code”. I also delete the y axis values 1 to 6 and manually write in the EDP phases using Insert -> Shape. \u00a0 \u00a0See final example.<\/p>\n

\"points\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The trick is to use custom X error bars (positive only), which is actually what we want to see.<\/p>\n

Select the code series and format it. Select error bars, plus, and custom. \u00a0Then select the duration (elapsed) cells for the custom values of the error bars.<\/p>\n

You then format the error bars to be a thick line.<\/p>\n

Then erase the points by selecting and formatting those as \u00a0Marker -> No Marker. \u00a0Then delete the actual data points.<\/p>\n

Here is the result. \u00a0I also changed the color of the error bars. \u00a0I have not yet figured out how to change each code’s timeline (error bars) to a different color.<\/p>\n

Note that EXCEL correctly handles the overlapping, simultaneous activities 1 and 2 that occur between 2 and 3 minutes.<\/p>\n

\"final\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you produce a timeline of recurring activity types easily using EXCEL? \u00a0I had some trouble getting EXCEL to do this so I am sharing my technique here. \u00a0I use this in my research to characterize the engineering design … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childdevelop","category-research","category-robotics","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nHow To Make An Activity Timeline in EXCEL (Revised) - Kids Engineer!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=1058\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How To Make An Activity Timeline in EXCEL (Revised) - Kids Engineer!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How do you produce a timeline of recurring activity types easily using EXCEL? 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