What Is Office Timeline?

If you have ever stared at a sprawling Gantt chart five minutes before an executive read-out, you already know the pain point Office Timeline solves. The Windows add-in (and its browser twin) turns raw schedules—Excel sheets, MS Project files, Smartsheet rows—into one-slide visuals people actually understand. Instead of wrestling with drawing tools, you click a wizard, pick a layout, and watch a polished timeline appear inside PowerPoint. In short, Office Timeline helps project leads, consultants, and PMOs translate complex plans into clear stories their audience can absorb in seconds.

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The Main Features of Office Timeline

Below are the headline capabilities that make the tool more than “just another chart generator.”

Template Library & Themes

Start fast with dozens of designer-made templates—from product roadmaps to clinical-trial schedules. You can swap colors, fonts, and brand elements in a couple of clicks, then save your own presets for reuse (Expert plan). The result is on-brand graphics without a detour through a design team.

Swimlanes & Sub-Swimlanes

For multi-team or multi-phase projects, Swimlanes group tasks by workstream, department, or sprint. Plus and Expert users can add unlimited lanes and even nest Sub-Swimlanes, making parallel work instantly legible. Hiding or reordering lanes is a one-click affair, which keeps slides tidy as plans evolve. Swimlanes are the secret sauce that turns a flat list into a visual hierarchy. 

Dependencies & Critical Path

Need to show why one delay ripples through the whole program? Toggle on Dependencies, draw a quick link, and Office Timeline highlights the Critical Path automatically. Stakeholders see exactly which tasks can’t slip—and which ones have slack—without scrolling through MS Project.

Planned vs Actual Tracking (Expert-only)

Launched mid-2025, Planned vs. Actual lets Expert users overlay baseline dates with real progress. Schedule shifts pop out visually, so status meetings move from “What changed?” to “How do we fix it?” Faster decisions, fewer surprises. 

Data Import, Refresh & Integrations

Copy-paste is fine for quick drafts, but most teams pull live data. Office Timeline imports from Excel, Smartsheet, Jira, Project, and even Wrike; Plus and Expert plans can refresh a slide when the source changes—no rebuild required. The Smartsheet connector, for example, maps columns automatically and respects hierarchy filters, saving hours on large portfolios. Integrations keep visuals and reality in sync.

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Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?

Office Timeline follows a per-user, annual subscription model:

• Free – Create up to 10 items per slide; great for occasional use.
• Lite – $108/year; adds two Swimlanes and basic Excel copy-paste. 
• Plus – $199/year; unlimited Swimlanes, Dependencies, triple timescales, and Excel import. (Formerly Pro+.)
• Expert – $249/year; everything in Plus and Planned vs Actual, custom templates, advanced integrations, and premium support.
• Online Premium – $149/year; browser version with collaboration and download to PPT/PNG.

A 14-day full-feature trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee soften the commitment. Volume discounts are available for teams, and you can upgrade mid-cycle by paying just the price difference.

FAQ

Does Office Timeline work on macOS?

The desktop add-in is Windows-only because it embeds in PowerPoint for Windows. Mac users can access the Online version through any modern browser.

Can I upgrade from Lite to Plus (or Plus to Expert) later?

Yes. When you upgrade, you pay only the prorated difference, and your existing license key simply unlocks the new features for the remaining term.

Is there a free version?

Absolutely. The Free plan has no time limit and lets you build simple timelines and Gantt charts capped at 10 items—perfect for testing the waters.

What project-management tools does Office Timeline integrate with?

Depending on plan tier, you can import and refresh data from Excel, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Jira, and Wrike, ensuring your slide deck reflects the latest schedule.

How secure is my data?

Office Timeline is SOC 2 compliant and offers both on-prem import (desktop) and encrypted cloud storage (online). You control what gets uploaded; offline work stays local.

Whether you need a quick milestone slide or an executive program roadmap complete with critical-path and variance tracking, Office Timeline removes the formatting grind so you can focus on the narrative. And in a world where attention spans shrink by the quarter, that clarity is worth its weight in saved meeting minutes.