ClaudioCfi86 has built something genuinely clever: a VB script that pushes MS Project files to export themselves as XLS, then PowerQuery to stitch those exports into a single table. The question now is how to turn that table into a multi-project Gantt or swimlane chart. Our take is blunt: stop trying to make Excel do what it was never built to do. You have already done the hard part. The data pipeline works. What you need next is not a better chart type, it is a tool designed for the job.
Excel is a phenomenal calculator and a decent flat-file organizer, but it is a terrible scheduling engine. Stacked bar charts are the default suggestion from search engines and LLMs because they are the only halfway-reasonable visualization Excel can produce from a flat table of dates and durations. They will show you blocks of time, but they will not show you dependencies, critical paths, resource conflicts, or the overlapping logic that makes a Gantt chart useful. A stacked bar chart answers "how much work exists in this month" but not "why are these two projects both demanding the same team in February." That second question is the one that matters.
Power BI is a better answer than Excel, but it is still a partial answer. Power BI can ingest your combined table, build a timeline visual, and even layer in some basic project logic if you invest time in DAX measures and custom visuals. It will look cleaner than Excel, and it will handle larger data volumes without grinding to a halt. But Power BI is a reporting tool, not a scheduling tool. It can show you the swimlanes you want, but it cannot help you reschedule a task and see the downstream effects propagate automatically. That is the difference between a dashboard and a plan.
The real opportunity here is to stop treating the output table as a finished product and start treating it as an input to a proper multi-project scheduling platform. Several modern tools, including AI-native spreadsheet solutions, can ingest flat project data and reconstruct the relationships that MS Project originally held. They can generate swimlane views, detect overallocation, and let you drag tasks to new dates with instant recalculation. Your VB script and PowerQuery pipeline are already doing the heavy lifting of collection and consolidation. Do not waste that effort by forcing the visualization into a tool that cannot handle the logic. Point that pipeline at a platform that understands projects, not just cells. You are one connector away from a view that actually helps you manage the work.