Microsoft Excel does not have a critical path feature per se. You can, however, use the spreadsheet platform and some custom edits to calculate the critical path for small projects on your own. Here is what you need to do: 1. Create a precedence diagram – on a piece of paper, arrange all your project’s activities (tasks) in the logical order in which they need to occur. Use boxes for tasks and arrows to indicate how they are connected (which activities cannot proceed without another’s output). This sequential flow will give you the structure for your Excel critical path template. 2. Organize your data into an Excel spreadsheet – create three main heading and label them as “Activity List”, “Duration of Activities”, and “Possible Activity Paths”, respectively. Under the first heading, enter the complete list of activities; input the duration of these activities under the second heading, and use the third column to indicate your activity sequences. 3. Identify your project’s critical path – to compute the critical path, which refers to the longest sequence of activities in your precedence diagram, you need to calculate the duration of each individual path identified at Step 2. Use Excel’s SUMPRODUCT function to do this. Once you have the values for each activity path, look for the highest one to determine the critical path of your project. After you have carried out the steps above, you can start building a Gantt chart to visually represent the schedule for your activities. Jumpstart this process with our easily customizable templates.