I’m Naomi Walsh and I am a novice consultant. One of the challenges of breaking into consulting is presenting yourself as a professional. One way that I do this is to share timelines for projects that I am working on – they show that I am organized and prepared, and provide a visual planning aid for those with whom I am working.
Hot Tip – Office Timeline 2010: I recently found this free PowerPoint plug-in that incorporates an extremely easy to use timeline maker right into PowerPoint. It includes a wizard that walks you through, step-by-step, adding planning stages and milestones, creates a great-looking timeline, and then has options for tweaking the results. And, it’s free.
Office Timeline Once Installed in PowerPoint
The resulting timelines may be shared within a PowerPoint presentation or, as here, clipped and incorporated into other documents. The example timeline below took me less than five minutes to make. It shows the basic functionality, but you can get much more detailed.
Example Timeline
Lesson Learned: Installation can take a few iterations. It took me over 20 minutes to get Office Timeline finally installed on my laptop as I needed to install two other items first. But, the install wizard walked me through the process each step of the way and that is the only challenge I’ve had with the program.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.
I have learned using tools and plug-ins can literally save hours and quite a bit of frustration, too.
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Not to worry, Naomi. This is why I continue to maintain a dual platform household. Thank you for the great resource!
One thing to note – they just launched on Office Timeline + and it costs the exorbitant price of $2,99. The link for it is at the TOP of the homepage, but if you scroll down, the link for the free version is still there at the bottom left corner. I may upgrade just to support the group’s work.
Awesome! Thank you so much.
Thanks, Naomi! Your post was one of the few that highlighted a tool/approach I didn’t already know about. Much appreciation:)
I am sorry Anne. I did not think that it worked only for those using windows. I should have realized this and put it in the review. I do not know of an equivalent option for people using Macintosh computers.
I actually have this installed on my mac laptop – but I’m running bootcamp, so it is booted as a PC. Running great though. I’m afraid I don’t know of a Mac equivalent, will contact Naomi.
I agree with Anne; this particular plugin is for Windows users only.
Awesome – thanks for sharing this gem!
Jane
Thanks for this, Naomi! Do you know of an equivalent resource for Macs?