How to Make a Timeline online

A timeline lists events in chronological order, typically on a horizontal timescale. Vizzlo is a tool that helps you to create beautiful project management charts online and offline easily. All you need to do is register for an account.

What is a timeline good for?

Being able to keep a realistic schedule for your projects is an essential skill that many seek for. Setting up a project timeline does not have to be difficult. A timeline helps to set clear directions and priorities, in which small actionable steps are visualized as milestones. A Timeline helps you to break a complex project down into smaller pieces.

Milestones are displayed in a chronological order to effectively visualize information over time. Whether you need it for project management purposes, to illustrate legal cases, or to outline historical events.

How to Make a Timeline with Vizzlo

1. Import your data from as Microsoft Excel file, CSV file or connect to Google Sheets document
2. Select any milestone to edit its date, and description
3. Add an optional scale to switch from between a linear timeline and non-linear timescale
4. Set the granularity at which the milestones should be positioned: by day, week, month, quarter, or year.
5. Change colors and adjust fonts.
6. Export your work as PDF or PNG.
7. Embed the chart into PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Data import

You can import your data from as Microsoft Excel file, CSV file or connect to Google Sheets document.

Select any milestone to edit its date, and description

To edit any of the existing milestones, simply click on it and start editing. You can edit the elements either directly or in the sidebar. Further, you can also use the spreadsheet to add your data.

Add an optional scale to switch from between a linear timeline and non-linear timescale

Scale breaks can make your timeline more compact. That is a useful feature if you have long gaps between your milestones. To add a scale break, hover your mouse over the time axis. Click on the + icon and choose Add scale break.

Note: A scale break can have two effects:

1. If you choose to position your milestones “By Date” you can grab and drag the scale break to optimize the distribution of the milestones as you wish. Note that milestones will not be positioned on a linear timescale anymore.
2. If the positioning of your milestones is set to “Manual,” by dragging the scale break, the distribution of your milestones will be unaffected. You will only reposition the scale break within your timeline such that the scale break is more of a ‘cosmetic’ effect.

Set the granularity at which the milestones should be positioned: by day, week, month, quarter, or year.

When you change granularity of your milestones this will have an effect on:

• how dates are displayed
• the design and
• the granularity of the milestone position

Note: Choose “Free form text” if you want to create a simple sequence of events without particular dates. This will further enable you to add an additional text label to each milestone.

Change colors and adjust fonts

Besides the text itself, you can also change the font properties. For the timeline, all the text elements except the dates support rich-text formatting. That means you can adjust the font size, the font color, font background color and font style character by character, add bullet points and adjust the text alignment etc. Highlight the text you want to format and start editing.

Export your work as PDF or PNG

Embed the chart into PowerPoint or Google Slides

Besides our web app at vizzlo.com, Vizzlo offers PowerPoint add-in that ships with our free desktop app for Windows. Our desktop app works on Mac and Linux too. It is the charting tool that you can take with you wherever you go. With hundreds of business charts and graphs, unlimited features, and seamless integration, Vizzlo helps you create visualizations with ease. Whether you work online or offline, you can create charts with confidence. Vizzlo makes charting easy.

You can download our FREE add-in from the Microsoft Store. Download the app, create a Vizzlo account, install the PowerPoint add-in and you are ready to get starting.