Ms Project Using

8/3/2019 Ms Project Using

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Patricia Egen Consulting 1

Microsoft Project

Tips & Techniques Lab

August 2004 New York Session 1482Patricia Egen

www.egenconsulting.com


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Summary Slide

Changing Row Height

Clear Baseline

Roll Up Tasks for Project

Use Month as a Duration Unit

Fill Handles


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Summary Slide (cont.)

Layout tips

Layout Tips 2

Gantt Chart Tips

Printing Gantt Charts

Working with Tasks

Working with Dates Resource Leveling

Reports


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Summary Slide (cont.)

Why does Project ignore priorities?

Why dont subtasks get included in

summary tasks' timelines?

Why does Project leave gaps?


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Changing Row Height

Single row:

Drag the row line between tasks to the height

you want.

All Rows

Click the upper left hand corner to highlight all

rows then adjust row size


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Clear Baseline

Point to Tracking on the Tools menu, and thenclick Clear Baseline.

To clear baseline information for specific tasks only,select those tasks.

To clear baseline information for the entire project, startwith next step.

Click Clear baseline plan or Clear interim plan. To

clear an interim plan, you need to select it in thelist box.

Click Entire project or Selected tasks.


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Patricia Egen Consulting7

Roll Up Tasks for Project

To easily display multiple Gantt bars on a

single task line for the whole project.

On the Format menu, click Layout.

Click Always roll up Gantt bars.


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Use Month as a Duration Unit

Typing 3mos in the duration field is recognized as

three months.

By default, a month has 20 days, but you can alsospecify how many days constitute a month.

On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click

the Calendar tab.

Specify the number of days in the Days per month

box.


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Fill Handles

Use fill handles to copy task or resourceinformation up or down in the sheet portion of anyview, such as the left-hand portion of the GanttChart.

Select the cell that contains the information you want tocopy.

Click and drag the square in the lower right hand corner

to highlight cells up or down. Release the mouse button to fill highlighted cells with

the contents of the original cell.


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Layout tips

In the Gantt Chart, double click on the right edge of acolumn header to "best fit" the column.

To quickly change the name of a column, doubleclick in the column header and enter a new name for

the field in the Title field. Example, abbreviate the Duration field name to Dur

To quickly change the field in a column, double clickin the column header and select the new field from

the Field Name list. While in the Field Name list, press the first letter of the

desired field to go to that field.


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Layout Tips 2

To quickly modify or delete a dependency, double click on

the dependency line between the two tasks to display the

Task Dependency form

In any drop down list such as the list of Resource Names

or the list of Filters you can press the first letter of the item

you are looking for to quickly go that item.

Use the Insert key on your keyboard to quickly insert rows

and columns.

In the Gantt chart, click on a row and press the Insert key to insert

a blank row above the selected row. Click on a column header to highlight a column and press Insert to

insert a column to the left of the selected column.

Use the Delete key to reverse this process


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Printing Gantt Charts

When printing any timescaled charts such as Gantt

Charts you can adjust the width of the timescale to

fit the page without changing the timescale units.

Double click on the Timescale and increase the number

in the % field to make the timescale take up more of the

page or decrease the number in the % field to make the

timescale narrower.

The latter step is useful when a chart is just a little toowide to fit on a page.


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Working with Tasks

To select two or more non-adjacent tasks, click on a

task (in the table area), hold down the Ctrl Key and

click on another task in the chart.

Continue holding the Ctrl key to select other tasks. This

is especially useful for linking or unlinking tasks that are

not on consecutive rows.

To change information for a number of tasks at

once, highlight the desired tasks and select the Task

Information button. Enter the common information in one of the fields

displayed in the "Multiple Task Information" dialog box.


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Working with Dates To remove a date constraint from a task, select the task (or

multiple tasks) and select the Task Information button.

Click in the Advanced tab, change the Type field to As Soon

As Possible and click OK. This removes any date constraint

in the task and allows it to be scheduled based on the

dependencies rather than a date. If a task does not move (reschedule) based on a dependency, it

may contain a "fixed" date of some kind.

A fixed date could be an Actual Start or a constraint such as

Must Start On or Start No Earlier Than. Use the Tasks with Fixed Dates Filter to view only those

tasks in a plan that contain fixed dates.


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Resource Leveling

If after removing the Actual Start and anyconstraint a task still does not reschedule based ona dependency, check the Resource Levelingfeature.

Make sure Automatic Leveling is turned off byselecting Resource Leveling from the Tools menu andchoosing Manual.

If a task still does not move, it may contain a delaybased on a previous Resource Level.

Select Resource Leveling again from the Tools menuand choose Clear Leveling.

Select whether or not to remove Leveling from theselected tasks or for the entire project.


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Reports

A handy report is the Calendar view using aResource Filter.

Select Calendar from the View menu.

Select the Using Resource Filter and type inthe name of the desired resource to display theCalendar for a particular resource.

This produces a nice printout of a resources

tasks with each month of a project on a separatepage.


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Why does Project leave gaps?

You have collapsed some summary tasks.

Subtasks that are collapsed don't show up

anywhere, leaving gaps. To fix this, select all tasks, and click on Expand (the

plus sign).

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