To ensure your data remains easy to read, it would be safe to keep a maximum of 5 to 7 milestones. You’ll notice that PowerPoint automatically shrinks the text size the more events you add to your timeline. To add more milestones to your PowerPoint timeline, simply press Enter after an existing item in the Text Pane and insert your data. That’s why we’d recommend leaving them as they are. You can manually drag milestones closer to or farther away from each other, but as you add more items on the timeline, the layout will get distorted. This is because the tool “reads” the dates you enter as plain text, so it can’t calculate the number of days between two milestones. Note: You’ll notice that PowerPoint places your milestones equidistant on the timeline, regardless of the relative distance between their dates. Press Shift + Enter to insert a line break and show the date and description of a milestone one below the other. Here, type in your milestone dates and descriptions, and PowerPoint will automatically update the graphic. If the Text Pane is not already visible, click on the small icon right on the left of your timeline arrow to open it. That’s why we’d recommend using the Text Pane instead, as it’s faster and it allows you to easily add extra milestones to your PowerPoint timeline. You can insert your own data directly on the graphic by typing inside the boxes on the slide, but adding new milestones or events besides the 3 default ones can become a little tricky this way. The default graphic generated by PowerPoint will have placeholder text and only 3 milestones.

You can change the style at any time from the SmartArt Tools Design tab on the ribbon if you want to try out different layouts for your graphic. For a simple graphic that clearly shows the key events or milestones of a project, we’d recommend choosing the Basic Timeline.

In the window that pops up, select the Process category, where you will find a variety of graphic options to choose from for your PowerPoint timeline. Go to the Insert tab on the PowerPoint ribbon and click on the SmartArt button in the Illustrations section. Here are the exact steps:Ĭreate a new presentation or open an existing one and add a new blank slide. If you prefer to manually build a PowerPoint timeline, you will need to use PowerPoint's SmartArt tools to create a basic visual and then adjust that graphic to make it look better for presentations. How to manually make a timeline in PowerPoint 1. Create a basic timeline graphic.

Timeline slide template