I’m struggling with making a specific type of chart in Google Sheets and could use some help.
I have a spreadsheet with four columns of project information. The first column has the project names, second column shows remaining hours for each project, third column contains start dates, and fourth column has end dates.
What I want to do is make a line graph where each project gets its own line. The y-axis should show the remaining hours value, and the x-axis should display dates. Each line needs to start at the project start date and finish at the project end date, with the height matching the hours remaining.
I’ve been experimenting with different chart options but haven’t found the right approach yet. Would it help if I restructure my data differently? Any suggestions on the best way to set this up would be great.
Google Sheets chart options suck for this. You’ll waste hours fighting with data formatting just to get something that looks basic.
Hit this same wall last month when we needed project timeline visuals. Burned way too much time trying to make Sheets do what it’s not built for.
What actually worked: automation that pulls your project data and spits out proper timeline charts. Connect your Google Sheets directly and get the visualization you want without the chart wrestling.
It reads your four columns, handles the date ranges, and creates clean timeline charts with each project as its own line. No data restructuring required.
Best part? Updates to your sheet automatically refresh the charts. Beats rebuilding everything manually when project data changes.
Latenode makes this dead simple - handles the Google Sheets connection and chart generation without coding.
Your problem is Google Sheets trying to make a line chart when you need a horizontal timeline. I hit this same issue tracking dev sprints last year. Your data’s fine - you just need a different approach. Convert your start/end dates to duration calculations, then use a stacked bar chart instead. This lets you show project timelines horizontally with remaining hours as bar height. You’ll need helper columns to calculate days from your earliest start date so the bars position correctly on your timeline. It’s more setup work upfront, but handles overlapping projects way better than forcing line charts to do timeline stuff.
Just dealt with this same issue on our team dashboards. Skip the traditional line charts - they’re a pain for this. Use a scatter plot with smooth lines instead. Set up three columns: date points, remaining hours, and project ID. Here’s the trick - you can’t just use start and end dates. Google Sheets needs multiple points to draw decent lines between projects, so I add weekly intervals in between. Make your scatter chart, group by project name to get separate lines, then turn on smooth connections. Works perfectly and you don’t need any external tools.
gantt charts r the way to go for project timelines. just select ur data, go to Insert > Chart, and choose timeline or gantt. u might need to tweak ur date formats too. i did it for my proj tracking and it turned out awesome!