LibAnswers: Digital Skills

Gantt Components

There are two main components of a Gantt project:

• the visual timeline of phases, tasks, start/end dates and completions.
• the Project Report - summarises the data in your project which you can share with your team or submit in a report. The Project Report export can help analyse the progress of your project until completion, as it summarises the status of the project, phases and individual tasks.

Exports

What can you export in the Gantt mode of MindGenius:

• Project Report (Word)
• Excel Spreadsheet
• Excel Gantt Spreadsheet

What can you also Print the Gantt chart:

• Gantt Chart as Print or PDF

The Gantt Timeline

As a Gantt chart is a working live document it can span over several months. When you are viewing the timeline in Weeks, it most likely will not fit on an A4 landscape-size page. You can therefore first change the timeline to Months, but even then it may span over two pages in the final print or export.

So, depending on the format of the Gantt information that you would like to include in your written assignment, you can export it into any of the above formats and then copy or screenshot it to your Word document. The Project Report is already a Word document, so you can easily copy the project summaries to your written work.

Printing

You can also print the Gantt chart to PDF and then copy it into your Word document later. There are a few adjustments to set before printing (see steps below). 

You can't export the Gantt chart as a PNG, but you can Print it as a PDF. However, if you see the option in the Print window to send to OneNote, then it will be sent as images into OneNote. You can also opt to Save it as a Gantt Spreadsheet in Excel (from the menu ribbon in the Gantt tab/view) and then Print or copy it from there.

To fit/print (PDF) into an A4 page width, you can try the following:

Change the Timeline view from week to month:

Then, adjust the column widths.

Open Print Preview>Include Options and de-select the columns to be excluded in the print.

In Print Preview>Page Setup de-select Auto-Fit and select Fit-to-1 page + Landscape.

Close the Print Preview and click on the Print button on the menu ribbon (Gantt view/tab).

In the Print window, select a PDF as output (in printer name) and select print Gantt Chart Only. Your laptop may have a different name for its PDF printer.

You can also opt to convert the Gantt chart to a Gantt Excel Spreadsheet.

The Save Gantt Spreadsheet exports the Gantt chart columns and timeline. Once in Excel, the date column is responsve, so if you subsequently change dates in Excel, it amends the timeline in Excel.

The Save Spreadsheet button exports the Gantt chart columns only and not the timeline.