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A timeline or event matrix chart shows events and when they occurred. It also shows the people or entities involved. A simple timeline is shown below. The events are shown in rectangles. The time that the event happened is shown at the top of each gray vertical bar. The entities involved are listed on the left of the chart in circles. In this chart the entities are Jens Jensen, Pete Petersen, and Simon Simonsen. If you are not using data from a spreadsheet, then you should see the Web page How to Draw A Timeline.

1. Run Your Spreadsheet program
Run Microsoft Excel or whatever spreadsheet program you are using and open the file with the data. Make a note of what columns in this file contain the date, time, event, and entities. In the sample below the date is in column A, the time is in column B, the event is in column C, and the entities are in columns D, E, and F. You can select any columns you wish to enter the data. For example, the event could be in column A or B or C or .... The date must be in the format "3/14/1998." The time must be in the format "1:30 PM." The time is optional, but you must identify a date and an event. The event describes what happened. The date is the date the event happened. The entities are the people involved. You can have commas in your data since Excel will place quotation marks around an entry that contains commas. Save this file as a .csv (comma separated variable) file and make a note of what folder it is saved in.

2. Run Timeline
In RFFlow click Tools, Auto Charts, and Enter Timeline Data. The Timeline program will run. This feature is included in both the free trial version of RFFlow and the full version. You need to have RFFlow 5.03 or higher.

3. Assigning Columns
In the Timeline program, click Tools and Select CSV Columns. The dialog box shown below will appear. In this dialog box you are telling the program which column contains what data.  For example, the Event data is in column C of our spreadsheet, so we select C for the Event.  If there is no time column in your spreadsheet, select "Not Used."  As stated before, you must have at least a date column and event column in your spreadsheet.  Click the OK button when you are finished with this dialog box.

4. Inserting the Data
Next you click Insert, CSV File in the Timeline program and insert the .csv file you saved earlier. After opening the .csv file, our sample data inside the Timeline program is shown below. You could edit it at this time, but then your spreadsheet data will not match your Timeline data, so it is best to edit the spreadsheet data.

4. Adding a Title
You can add a title and other information to your chart by clicking Tools in the main menu of Timeline, and Add Title. The dialog box that appears allows you to enter a title for your timeline and to enter case information. The title and case information will be added to the chart when it is drawn in RFFlow.

5. Saving Your Data
After entering all the information, you need to save this data to a file on your hard drive. Click File in the main menu of Timeline and Save in the drop-down menu. The Save As dialog box will appear.

You need to save your data so you can import it into RFFlow to create a Timeline chart. You may also want to edit the data later adding entities or events.

The folder where your data will be saved is shown to the right of the words Save in:.

To save in a different folder, click on the triangle pointing down to the right of the words Save in: and select a different folder. You can move up a folder by clicking . Remember where you saved the file so you can find it again in step 7 below.

Type the name of the file into the box near the words File name:. Just type the file name. The extension .txt will automatically be added. The files used by Timeline are text files like those created with Microsoft Notepad.

6. Drawing the Timeline Chart in RFFlow
After saving the data in a text file, you then import the file into RFFlow. RFFlow creates the Timeline chart. In RFFlow, click Tools, Auto Charts, and Draw Timeline. 

7. Opening the Text File
The Timeline chart data was saved in a .txt file. You have to be able to browse to the folder where you saved your file in step 5 and open it. The Open dialog box will appear.

The folder whose contents are displayed is listed to the right of the words Look in:. To change folders, click on the triangle pointing down and choose a new folder. You can move up one level in the hierarchy of folders by clicking .

Once you are displaying the correct folder, simply click on the name of the file and click the Open button.

8. Selecting a Line Style
All The events are connected by lines. You can choose the style of the arrow head and also whether the lines are straight horizontal and vertical lines, diagonal lines, or curves.  Just click on the stencil in the dialog box shown below and then click on the line. Finally click the OK button.

9. Selecting the Number of Pages
Next you can specify the number of pages the timeline should cover. Try using one page first. If the font is too small to read easily, try multiple pages.

10. Editing your Chart
Your Timeline chart will automatically be generated. You can then edit it using all the editing features of RFFlow. It is just like any other chart that you draw in RFFlow. You can edit the text, delete shapes, and change colors as usual. The lines are drawn in different colors.  If you are printing with a black and white printer, you may want to select the entire chart by clicking Edit, Select All and then right-click on any object and change the pen color to black.

11. Finished
At the end of this process, you will have generated two files. One is the text file (.txt) where you saved the data. That file was generated by the Timeline program. The other file is the RFFlow file (.flo) which contains the actual Timeline chart. Both should be saved as you may want to edit the Timeline data and generate another slightly different chart.

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