Best program for creating timelines

Aeon Timeline is an offline timeline maker that works best for users who want to create timelines for project management purposes. It is primarily used by writers and creative content creators. It is an easy-to-use application that helps you create detailed timelines. Aeon Timeline maker provides you the flexibility to add date ranges in your timelines as per your liking. You can also color-code and label all parts of your project for an easier understanding. Primarily created to facilitate the news media industry, TimelineJS is a free, open-source timeline maker.

It allows you to create visually interesting timelines using just a Google Spreadsheet. You can create interactive timelines using this software. TimelineJS is a plugin that can be enabled on your website. Just create a Google Spreadsheet, enter the data you need to see in your timeline and this plugin will automatically generate a timeline for you. Timeline Makers are here to save you the hassle. You can visualize and creatively present your projects now with timelines.

Get your hands on some of the best Timeline Creators and let us know of your experience. We met Dan at a tech conference in San Francisco earlier this year, and his obsession with software was amazing to see. Next thing you know we are best friends with Dan, and welcomed him to the All That SaaS contributing staff with open arms. Great list. Event Viewpoint has an interactive timeline, slideshow, list, and map view.

You can control access to friends or groups of friends, upload photos, videos, and other documents. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Want to stay updated on the latest SaaS trends and insights? Subscribe to All That SaaS. It only takes a second. What is the Timeline? Some of the most common implementations are seen in Historical Studies and Project Management.

How to Make a Timeline? First and foremost, the purpose has to be clearly determined. Think about two things: the title of your timeline, and the time period it covers. Research as much as you can. Think about how much information you can cover in the timeline. Build your timeline. Avoid clutter, always. Only provide accurate information.

Your timeline should be scalable. As you proceed towards your goal, there would be a lot of things that would need to be customized and the timeline should be able to adapt accordingly. Define your ultimate goal and outcomes within your timeline. Avoid descriptions and instead, use labels for the events and milestones.

Features to Look for in Timeline Makers The range of options that various timeline makers provide is vast. However, here are the most important features that make a timeline maker stand out: Templates and Diagrams: A timeline maker with a vast library of templates, styles, shapes, and graphs, saves an incredible amount of time and effort, compared to when you start right from scratch. Cloud Storage: This ensures that your data is accessible from anywhere and you can continue working where you left from any device.

Embed Feature: This should work both ways; you should be able to embed your timeline on your website and embed external content on your timeline as well. Collaboration: If you work in a team, then your timeline maker must allow for multiple content creators to work in collaboration. Responsiveness: If your timeline appears great on the desktop but appears truncated on your phone, you should better look for another app.

Customization: Not every app will contain every feature, but with customizations, you can get exactly what you need. From events to data formats, milestone markers to backgrounds, the more customization options you have, the better your output will be.

The Best Timeline Makers in There are a lot of timeline makers available for you to choose from. Features You can convert any existing project into a template and create custom content much faster. Share template designs across multiple projects; any changes you make will reflect across all projects containing that design.

Track the number of visitors and the duration of visits to your published timelines. Create and store an unlimited number of projects. Just like a social media platform, users can publish their content on the Timetoast website.

Features Insert events or multi-date timespans and directly add text, images, or links. Automatically have your events placed on the appropriate timescale. Zoom and pan your timeline. Additional date options such as BCE dates, year-only dates, as well as dates with a specific month and day. Note : Since Word is not able to automatically calculate time intervals between milestone dates, your milestones will be placed at equal distances on the timeline regardless of the number of days between them.

You have the option of manually dragging them closer or farther from one another, but the graphic will get distorted as you add more items. This is why we recommend leaving them as they are. To insert extra events or deliverables on your timeline, simply press Enter after an existing milestone label inside the Text Pane. The more events you add, the more the text size will shrink. This is why a maximum of 7 milestones is recommended to make sure that your data remains legible.

Note : Manually increasing the text size for improved readability may ruin the entire layout of your timeline. A better alternative would be for you to expand the graphic box, which will automatically make the texts larger too.

Now that your basic timeline is outlined, you can customize its overall look by changing its primary color theme from the Change Colors dropdown menu or by selecting a different style from the SmartArt Styles section. In our example, we applied the Intense Effect style, which made the milestone shapes more prominent.

To customize individual items on the timeline, use the formatting options available in the small window that appears once you right-click on the specific element you want to personalize. For example, you can change the color of a milestone or of the arrow-shaped band using Shape Fill , and that of the text using Font Color. This should make it easier for your audience to follow the succession of milestones. Finally, to make certain milestones stand out even more, you can also resize them or change their shape using the options in the Format tab.

Select more items at once by pressing and holding the Ctrl key while you click on the needed items. After experimenting with several shape and size options, our MS Word timeline looks like this:. Apart from being time-consuming, manually creating a timeline in Word may also get frustrating if you want to apply custom changes or need to regularly update the visuals for important presentations.

PowerPoint is better suited than MS Word for building visuals to present in client meetings or executive reviews. Below, we will demonstrate how to automatically create and update your graphic using a simple add-in for PowerPoint called Office Timeline.

To get started, you first need to install Office Timeline , which will add a timeline maker tab to the PowerPoint ribbon. You will be taken to a gallery where you can choose from a variety of styles and templates that you can use for your timeline. Double-click on the template or style you prefer and then select Use Template in the preview window to open the Data Entry Wizard.

For our example, we chose a custom template made earlier, which you can download here. In the Data Entry window, you can either manually enter your milestones and set their dates, or you can copy and paste them from an existing Excel file. Once you finish, click the Create button.

Each deliverable represents a milestone on your project timeline. The points between them are the tasks required to create that project deliverable. In order to make sure you have a thorough list of all your tasks, use a work breakdown structure, which is a tree diagram with your final deliverable on top and all the steps leading to it.

Are they specific enough? This is how you determine what is essential, and what could be left aside if time and costs constrain your effort. Every task must have a duration, and together, they all have to fit within the timeframe of your project timeline. You have all the project scope elements you need, and they can be assembled manually or by using a timeline maker or project management software.

A timeline maker will only help you create a project timeline, while a project management software will cover your time tracking, task management and team collaboration needs.

Here are a few to try out, some free and others paid. ProjectManager is a project management software that offers a complete set of planning, scheduling, tracking and reporting tools. Its Gantt chart feature lets you create interactive timelines for your projects in a few clicks. Office timeline is a powerpoint add-on to make and share different types of timelines. Although this timeline tool is designed for powerpoint presentations, it is capable of creating static Gantt charts and has different types of project timeline templates.

Microsoft project has project management tools to plan and manage your projects from start to finish. A free, lightweight project timeline maker that works fast to make colorful timelines. This web-based timeline tool allows you to build and share a timeline. You can create one timeline with up to 10 events on the free version, but payment is required to create more than that. An easy-to-use timeline creator designed for business.

It can attach supporting files, which is a helpful asset. You can create a project timeline, import data and save timelines in a variety of different formats.