From a list of dates
If your sheet is a list of events with one date each, such as key dates, releases or contract deadlines, copy the two columns with their headers and paste them above:
Milestone Date Kick-off 02/11/2026 Design sign-off 04/12/2026 Beta release 29/01/2027 Launch 15/03/2027
When there is a date column but no end date or duration, each dated row is drawn as a milestone diamond with its date beside it. Headers like Event, Milestone, Date, When and Key date are recognised; if yours aren’t, pick the roles in the Columns row under the paste box.
Adding spans
To show periods as well as moments (a phase, a campaign, a school term) add an End column, or a Duration column in days or weeks. Rows with an end date become bars, and rows where the end is blank or the duration is 0 stay as milestones. You can mix both in one list, which is how most project timelines look: a few phase bars with the important dates as diamonds.
Choosing the scale
The time scale is picked to fit the width: days for a few weeks, weeks for a few months, months for a year or two, quarters beyond that. You can force a scale from the Scale menu. On a day scale weekends are shaded, and with a holiday list chosen, bank holidays are shaded too. On longer scales only the holidays are shaded so the chart stays clean.
Timeline or Gantt chart?
The difference is mostly in how much you show. A timeline usually has a handful of rows (phases and milestones) and is read in seconds. A Gantt chart has every task, who owns it and what it waits for, and is used to run the work. GanttPaste draws both from the same rows: hide the owner column and dependency arrows under Show and hide and keep only phases and milestones for a timeline; turn everything on for a working Gantt chart.
Why not Excel’s own timeline?
Excel’s built-in Timeline is a slicer for filtering pivot tables by date, not a chart of your events. The usual workaround is a scatter or line chart with data labels and error bars as stalks, which takes a while to set up and needs re-labelling when dates change. SmartArt timelines in Excel and PowerPoint space items evenly rather than by date, so a gap of a week and a gap of a year look the same. Pasting the rows here puts each event at its real date.
Exporting
PNG and SVG are free and work in documents, slides, emails and wikis. For a deck, the PowerPoint export draws the timeline as native shapes (diamonds, bars and text boxes) you can edit on the slide; the PDF gives a fixed A4 or Letter page. Both cost one credit per chart.
Paste your events and dates above. Charts, editing, PNG and SVG are free with no sign-up. Editable PowerPoint and PDF cost one credit per chart (10 for £5).
Related: Make a Gantt chart from Excel · A project timeline slide for PowerPoint · Turn an Excel file into a Gantt chart