How To Build a Timeline In Pages

You can use a Chart to build a dynamic horizonal or vertical timeline in Pages. You can then easily adjust or add values to the timeline. This works for Keynote too.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to create a timeline in Pages. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
Now there's no Timeline function in Pages. But you can create charts. By using the right kind of chart you can build a Timeline. So let's launch Pages here. I'm going to create a new document and just choose a regular blank document. Now to create a Timeline I'm going to click on Chart and then I'm going to use the 2D scatter chart right here. So you get some sample data like this and you get a big Edit Chart Data button. To convert this to a Timeline let's first click the Edit Chart Data button. You get this floating window that you could use to change the values in here. We can make a vertical timeline or we can make a horizontal timeline. Let's start with a vertical one.
So you notice we have three columns here. Each one of these is known as a Series in the chart. Each one has a different color. So to use a different color for every item on the timeline we're only going to have one point in every column. Let's clear out everything that's in here. I'm going to select this cell and then this cell and then Delete. Then I'm going to go and name the columns for each item. Each one of these gets assigned a different color. Then you have X values and Y values. To begin we're going to set every X value to zero. Then we're going to set Y values for each one of these but we're going to do it diagonally. So each column has its own X point. So now we've created what looks like a timeline right here. So it already works pretty well.
Let's close this for now and adjust this chart. We're going to go to Format and Chart and let's turn off the legend to begin with to get rid of those labels at the top. Let's go to Axis. Now we can switch between X and Y. Let's start with Y and let's turn on the axis lines. So we'll have a line here that goes underneath all of our points. Let's set the scaling to something besides auto. So the maximum number here is 2010 and the minimum one is 1976. For the steps here let's increase this until we get something that there's an even number on the left. Now you're going to have to go all the way up to 17 to find that but once we see that we can make adjustments. So let's go and make the maximum 2012 instead knowing that we can now go down to 9 and we can get four years here on the left. Okay, so we'll keep the value labels as numbered there. Here under Major Grid Lines we'll turn those off to get rid of all of those.
Now let's go over to the X axis and let's turn off the line there at the bottom. We're going to set the value labels to None. Now we've got a timeline right here. You could see it looks pretty good. We can shrink this here because it really doesn't matter. All those values are zero and the right is one. But since they are all at zero it looks fine. Now we have something here we can drag and expand as we want. Let's get some labels on these. If we select the chart and then go to series what we've done is select all of the columns. If we were to go in and select one then we're looking at just that one series. But by selecting the entire thing like that the series changes we make here are going to apply to all of the columns. So let's have it show Series' names. That's going to put names for each one of these. It's going to take it from the top of those columns. Let's change the location to the right. We can change the symbols. We can have it be a triangle or a square or something like that. You could also change the size. Make it smaller or bigger. Then we can change the Font by going to Chart here and there's a Chart Font, there's Style, there's Size. We can shrink down the font there.
So now we've got something that looks pretty good. If we ever want to change anything or add anything we go into here. We change these numbers. We can add a new column here and then we can get the chart to look like what we want. Another thing we could do is we could add X values for all of these. So I'm going to make the X values the same. So now that I've added the X values we can see it's automatically adjusting putting the iPad to the right. We don't want that. We're going to go to axis and X and we're going to set the Scale and then we'll have it start at a minimum of zero. Go to something really big like one million. One million basically makes all these values round down to zero. They are all still on this line here. So you want to make sure that value is big enough so that everything still stays on the same line.
So now we can go, for the Series, we can have values shown. Click here and we can have values shown and it could be X or Y. So if we use X here, we'll turn off the thousand separator, it's going to take values that are from the left side. Now why didn't I just use the Y values which are actually the exact same numbers in this case. Well, because I want to reverse this. I want to have the 1976 at the top and 2012 at the bottom. The only way to do that is to change these values to negative. So I'm going to make this negative, this negative. Now that I've done that everything falls off the bottom of the chart. There are negative values and we have positive values here. So let's go and change this axis here, the Y axis, to the min max. It's a bit tricky to do it. I'm going to change the min to 2012 first, negative 2012 and the max to negative 1976 and now we could see that we get the values going in the right direction. Unfortunately, these are all negative numbers. You either have to live with that or you can go and turn those numbers off so the value labels return to None and we just have these hanging out here with these numbers.
Another thing we could have done, besides having the numbers taken from the X values, is we could simply add them in here. So you could do something like 1976 colon or you could have put them in parentheses afterwards. Now that we have that we can change the Series here to not show any values and we get something that looks like that. By doing it this way we also can change the location for the Series so instead of on the right we have it be on the left like that. Note that you can change things per item because each one of these is a different Series. So I can go into here, just select this one. I can change this location on the right like that. I could also go to Style here and change the Data Symbol for that one. I can set the color to something. So you have two colors here, this one and this one. You can change them both or one or the other. You can change the size for this. So you can have each one being different. Each one going to the left or right to make the timeline that much more interesting.
Now what happens if you want to make a horizontal chart. Well, the basics are the same. I'm going to create a new chart here. Scatter Chart. I'm going to Edit The Chart Data. But before I do anything else I'm going to click right here to swap the direction of the chart. So now the labels are all on the left. Now I can set each one of these up. I've got these extra rows here. I'm going to Delete those rows. I'm going to select all these and clear it out. Now I'm going to put the values here across the top for a horizontal chart. I'm just going to use zeros here, diagonally, across. I could use the actual values here again and do the same trick I did for the vertical chart. But it's really not needed for a horizontal chart. Now we see that everything is down here at zero. Let's go in and adjust the axis here for Y. Let's have this go for a minimum of zero and a maximum of one. I'm going to get rid of the value labels there. I'm going to shrink this down. I can get rid of the grid lines as well. I can go back to Chart here and get rid of the legend. Now let's go to the axis for X here. I will keep the line. I'm going to set the minimum value to be 1976. The maximum value to be 2010. I can use the steps here, if I want, go up to some value like the 17 there for these. For the Series here I have everything selected so it's going to effect all series. I'm going to say Show Series Names. Now you can see the names appear at the bottom. I could do above here to get those above. Now notice how it's putting some extra labels here. It doesn't seem to get when you're doing the horizontal chart that these blanks shouldn't be used. So I find what works best is to put some value way outside the range here. So let's make this negative a million. I'm going to Copy and Paste these values in here. So now that I've filled all of these with values that won't show up you can see how it is nice and clean here.
The great thing about this, of course, is it scales really nicely here. You can use these to create really neat and interesting timelines. If you want anything more than this or to make anymore modifications you always have the ability to create text boxes. You know put whatever you want in a text box and position that where you want in the timeline. You can even arrange and rotate a text box anyway that you want. You can do the same thing with shapes to add extra shapes to the timeline anywhere that you want. You can even use shapes and then do one of these lines here for arrows or something. So you have the ability to create almost anything that you want. What I'm trying to show you here is how to start off with a simple chart that can create a versatile timeline that you can use and then add to if you really want more.
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 5 Responses to “How To Build a Timeline In Pages”

Marie Seltenrych

3 years ago

Great tutorial. I was searching for something like this, and here it is. I will try to imitate your demo model. Thanks so much

Chuck

Gary, your jumping all over the place! How in the world can someone who doesn’t know about charts follow you! SLOW DOWN!

Gary Rosenzweig

Chuck: There'a speed control at the bottom of the video. You can also just pause as you follow along.

Chris

Great idea - one suggestion use custom formats to get rid of the negative sign, which means you can keep the interval timeline :)
Question instead of whole years can you use Date Formated Cells to create a 6 or 15 month timeline?

Chris: Good idea with formats. I hadn't tried that to see if the chart showed the formatted value. I'm not sure what you mean by your second idea, but try it and see.

Comments Closed.

How To Build a Timeline In Pages

Comments: 5 Responses to “How To Build a Timeline In Pages”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information