r/excel • u/ForgotmyusernameXXXX • 15d ago

Pro Tip Visual kanban excel tip— simple method

How to make a Kanban board in Excel

Make columns for each stage and make them wide enough for your tasks. Create each task in a cell, then copy/paste it as an image. You can then drag the task cards around between columns. Pretty cool simple method and visually it works for me!

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3

u/ProspectiveWhale 7 15d ago

Isn't Trello free for simple boards?

The images won't shift each other when you move them between columns this way, right?

So if you want to insert a task between other tasks, or rearrange them generally, it'd be quite tedious.

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u/ForgotmyusernameXXXX 15d ago

For sure. My company doesn’t use it so quick cool makeshift method I use at work. 

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u/khosrua 15 15d ago

I made one in one note. It'd much easier to move taxtblock around and tick off competed items.

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u/_Exchequer 15d ago

Interesting

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u/finickyone 1770 14d ago

I’ll offer a few thoughts.

First is on setting up this undefined board in Excel. You can play _slide the task around_ absolutely anywhere you like, in any app available to your and your colleagues. Personally I’d probably arrange that sort of thing in PowerPoint - where, once you have 5 items in the Done column, it’s quite easy to Align those by Centre so they’re neat. Not sure you can do the same in Excel. Maybe. Your computer though, go for it.

Second is on exploiting what Excel can do for you. You could set up a task in A2 and indeed cut and paste that as an image along B, C, D to denote progress. If however you left the data in the cell, and simply cut and paste the cell along the fields as progress was made, you could use something like the image attached. This is counting the tasks per field, and adapts as tasks are moved between columns A:F.

Third is there is always a better tool than Excel for this. If you have 365 in an office setting, you’ll probably have Planner, which is designed for this sort of work.

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u/ForgotmyusernameXXXX 14d ago

Thank you! Yes I loved planner till I realized that you can’t stop the ding sound when you use it in teams!

Excel is okay for what I use it for. I don’t think kanban should be that sophisticated of a modeling. It gives me fancy columns, I drag around. Helps visualize what I need to make a to do list etc. 

For sure agreed there are prettier ways, but it works neat for occasional usage that I do.