Genealogy Chart

Today we are going to apply a few tricks to create a genealogy chart. (I had to check my spelling – it is often misspelt as geneology and geneaology.) This is equivalent to creating a Gantt chart if you are scheduling a project. I am going to use the genealogies in the Bible in Genesis chapters 5 and 10 as my data set.

Step 1: Create or Collect Your Data

Arrange your data with two columns of numbers. The first column is the starting point of the bar in the chart and the second column is the size of the bar. See the screen shot below for an example.

Two columns: starting point and length

Step 2: Create the Chart

Go to the Charts group on the Insert tab of the ribbon. Select the stacked bar (2D bar). If you want to use a column chart instead then select the stacked column (2D column).

Select Stacked Bar chart

Step 3: Reverse the Order

When creating a genealogy chart or a Gantt chart, I prefer to have the first entry in my spreadsheet at the top of the chart. This is not the default for a bar chart, so this needs to be changed. To do this:

Right mouse click the vertical axis and select Format Axis.
Right mouse click the vertical axis and select Format Axis
Select the Categories in reverse order checkbox and click Close.
Select the Categories in reverse order checkbox

Step 4: Hide the First Bar

Hiding the first bar is the sneaky part with this chart. To do this:

Click once on any bar in the first data series on the chart. This selects the whole data series. Don’t double-click or else you will just select a single bar in the series.
Right mouse click and select Format Data Series.
Select Format Data Series for the first set of bars
Select the Border Color tab and select the No line radio button.
Select no border
Select the Fill tab and select the No fill radio button and click Close.
Select no fill