Microsoft Project

Microsoft Office®
Project® 2013/2016

Student Guide

COPYRIGHT © 2021 Pathfinder Learning, LLP. All rights reserved. [email protected]
www.pathfinderlearning.com
End User License Agreement: This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without prior express written permission of the publisher. All brand names, product names, trademarks, and registered
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
ISBN: 978-0-9908404-8-0

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Table of Contents 3

Table of Contents

How to Use This Book ........................................................................................................................ 6
Setting Up the Class Exercise Files ...................................................................................................... 6

Part 1: Planning the Project ......................................................................................... 7

Lesson 1: Groundwork—Where Do We Start? ........................................................... 9
Topic A: Project Management and Definitions................................................................................... 11
Topic B: The Program Layout—Navigation....................................................................................... 14
Exercise 1-1: Opening the Program, Learning the Layout............................................................... 15
Topic C: Some Useful Program Options ............................................................................................ 19
Exercise 1-2: Using the Options Dialog Box .................................................................................. 20
Topic D: A Few Project Essentials and Settings ................................................................................. 24
Exercise 1-3: Learning Some In-Window Settings and Other Views............................................... 25

Lesson 2: Starting a New Project............................................................................... 29
Topic A: Using a Project Template .................................................................................................... 31
Exercise 2-1: Starting a New Project with a Template .................................................................... 32
Topic B: Setting the Project Properties............................................................................................... 35
Exercise 2-2: Setting Properties in the Project Information Box...................................................... 36
Exercise 2-3: Entering Information in the Advanced Properties Box............................................... 38
Topic C: Create and Apply a Project Calendar ................................................................................... 41
Exercise 2-4: Creating and Applying a Project Calendar................................................................. 42

Lesson 3: Working with Tasks ................................................................................... 47
Topic A: Inserting and Modifying Tasks............................................................................................ 49
Exercise 3-1: Inserting and Arranging Basic Tasks......................................................................... 50
Exercise 3-2: Setting Durations and Dates...................................................................................... 52
Topic B: Linking Tasks and Setting Relationships ............................................................................. 53
Exercise 3-3: Link Tasks and Set Relationships.............................................................................. 55
Exercise 3-4: Setting Lag and Lead in a Task Relationship............................................................. 58
Topic C: Summary Tasks and Milestones .......................................................................................... 60
Exercise 3-5: Creating Summary Tasks and Milestones.................................................................. 61
Topic D: Using Manual vs. Auto Scheduling ..................................................................................... 64
Exercise 3-6: Setting Tasks to Manual or Auto Scheduling............................................................. 65

Lesson 4: Creating and Assigning Resources ......................................................... 67
Topic A: Adding Resources to a Project............................................................................................. 69
Exercise 4-1: Adding Resources to a Project .................................................................................. 70
Exercise 4-2: Adding Costs to Work Resources.............................................................................. 72
Topic B: The Resource Calendar ....................................................................................................... 74
Exercise 4-3: Modifying a Resource Calendar................................................................................ 75

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Topic C: Connecting Resources to Tasks ........................................................................................... 79
Exercise 4-4: Assign Resources to Tasks........................................................................................ 80
Exercise 4-5: Making Tasks Effort-Driven ..................................................................................... 84
Exercise 4-6: Using Resource Leveling.......................................................................................... 86

Lesson 5: Finishing the Plan...................................................................................... 90
Topic A: Using the Critical Path ........................................................................................................ 92
Exercise 5-1: Displaying the Critical Path ...................................................................................... 93
Exercise 5-2: Modifying Resources................................................................................................ 97
Exercise 5-3: Reassigning Resources on Tasks............................................................................. 100
Topic B: Setting and Using the Baseline .......................................................................................... 103
Exercise 5-4: Setting a Baseline and Checking Project Statistics................................................... 104
Topic C: Sharing and Exporting the Plan ......................................................................................... 108
Exercise 5-5: Printing and Exporting a Project Plan File............................................................... 109

Part 2: Executing the Project ................................................................................... 117

Lesson 6: Running the Project................................................................................. 119
Topic A: Updating Task Progress .................................................................................................... 121
Exercise 6-1: Setting the Status Date and Updating Tasks ............................................................ 122
Topic B: Using the Progress Line .................................................................................................... 126
Exercise 6-2: Showing and Using the Progress Line..................................................................... 127
Topic C: Reorganizing Data to View Progress ................................................................................. 129
Exercise 6-3: Grouping, Sorting, and Filtering Project Data ......................................................... 130

Lesson 7: Updating the Project Schedule............................................................... 134
Topic A: Rescheduling Tasks .......................................................................................................... 136
Exercise 7-1: Splitting and Rescheduling Tasks ........................................................................... 137
Topic B: Editing the Task List ......................................................................................................... 140
Exercise 7-2: Adding, Deleting, Moving, and Inactivating Tasks.................................................. 141
Topic C: Updating and Using Baselines ........................................................................................... 144
Exercise 7-3: Using a Baseline with the Tracking Gantt Chart...................................................... 145

Lesson 8: Using Different Project Views................................................................. 149
Topic A: Creating and Using Custom Views.................................................................................... 151
Exercise 8-1: Creating a Custom Single View .............................................................................. 152
Exercise 8-2: Creating and Using a Custom Combination View ................................................... 154
Topic B: The Network Diagram View ............................................................................................. 156
Exercise 8-3: Working with the Network Diagram View .............................................................. 157
Topic C: The Timeline..................................................................................................................... 160
Exercise 8-4: Displaying and Editing the Timeline....................................................................... 161
Exercise 8-5: Using the Timeline in a PowerPoint® Presentation (Optional) ................................. 163

Lesson 9: Working with Reports.............................................................................. 165
Topic A: Using Standard Reports..................................................................................................... 167
Exercise 9-1: Calling Up Standard Reports .................................................................................. 168
Topic B: Creating a Custom Report ................................................................................................. 171

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Table of Contents 5

Exercise 9-2: Creating a Custom Report....................................................................................... 172
Topic C: Using a Visual Report ....................................................................................................... 178

Exercise 9-3: Calling Up a Visual Report..................................................................................... 179

Lesson 10: Additional Features ............................................................................... 183
Topic A: Importing Data from Excel................................................................................................ 185
Exercise 10-1: Importing Data from an Excel File........................................................................ 186
Topic B: Using the Organizer .......................................................................................................... 190
Exercise 10-2: Using the Organizer.............................................................................................. 191
Topic C: Creating a Project Template .............................................................................................. 193
Exercise 10-3: Saving a Project as a Template.............................................................................. 194
Topic D: Master Projects and Subprojects........................................................................................ 198
Exercise 10-4: Creating Subprojects and a Master Project ............................................................ 199

INDEX ......................................................................................................................... 205

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6

How to Use This Book

This book is designed to be used as part of an instructor-led course. It contains various lessons
that will guide you through learning the course material. The topics are explained including
definitions of terms and relevant screen captures. Also included are exercises that will reinforce
the material discussed. The exercises build on each other.

Setting Up the Class Exercise Files

You should have a Windows-capable PC running, with any version of Windows from Windows
7 on up. Any installed version of Microsoft Office® Project® from 2013 on will run the exercise
files without any trouble.
When you sign up for the course, aside from this book, you should receive (usually via email) a
compressed or “zipped” file with the exercise files inside it. To unzip, you can normally double-
click the zipped file; you’ll get a dialog box asking where you want to put the resulting material.
We recommend unzipping to the Desktop, as it’s the easiest place to find and work with things
during class. If you prefer to put the files on your C: drive, or anywhere else, they’ll work, but
don’t forget where you put them!
Within the folder you’ll see, there should be sub-folders for each lesson. Sometimes, depending
on the course, there may not be any exercise files in a lesson folder at the beginning of the
lesson—you may be asked to create them. But there will usually be at least one. If you’re not
sure, read through the lesson material and check whether you need to open a file early on. There
may also be files with a name ending in “Complete”—these show you approximately where each
lesson’s work should end you up.

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7

Part 1: Planning the Project

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8
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Lesson 1: Groundwork 9

Lesson 1: Groundwork—Where Do We Start?

In this lesson, you will be introduced to:
1 Project Management and Definitions
2 The Program Layout—Navigation
3 Some Useful Program Options
4 A Few Project Essentials and Settings

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10 Lesson 1: Groundwork

What is a project?
What does Microsoft Project do?
How is the program laid out?
What are some of the main options?
Which elements in the window are important?

Project management has become a very important part of business in the last twenty years or so.
Projects have become so big, even multi-national, that without some means of organizing the
reams of data involved, let alone keeping track of scheduling and what’s done or not, it would be
impossible. Databases are one kind of software which will help, but it’s rather like using a
sledgehammer to drive a nail.
A specialized program for managing project data turns out to be a better choice. It’s actually still
a database, but set up in such a way that the raw data are laid out for things like easy scheduling,
assigning resources to tasks, and seeing where those things haven’t been done yet. And some of
the elements of project management go back a lot further than people think. It’s not even too
hard—just takes a little practice, and developing a step-by-step mindset.
One cautionary point to remember: It can’t do the work for us. Think of it as a superb secretary.
If you enter the data in a timely way, and update things when they need updating, you’ll get back
an accurate picture of how the project is going. Setting a schedule to do this is often helpful.
COURSE NOTE:
At this point, if you haven’t already, you’ll want to unzip or otherwise extract the exercise files
for the course. For simplicity’s sake, we recommend the Desktop. That’s where they’ll be as far
as the courseware is concerned.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 11

Topic A:
Project Management and Definitions

What exactly is a project? Most definitions agree on a few specific features:

• It has a schedule—a beginning, a middle, and an end. It starts on a certain date, goes for a
certain period of time, and then stops.

• It has a well-defined goal, or set of goals. Usually, it/they will include deliverables—
clearly stated things, whether tangible or not, that it’s going to create. Hardware and/or
software, so to speak.

• It should have concretely listed resources (the people and things to do the work), a well-
organized list of tasks to achieve the goals in question, and a reasonable budget, both in
time and in money, to make the goal(s) possible.

For example, if Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia is contracted to build an aircraft carrier
for the US Navy, they have a budget (several billion dollars), a timeline (three to five years), a
percentage of their workforce (around fifteen to twenty thousand people), and so on, allotted to
do the work. Similar thinking applies to Microsoft when the company wants to create a new
version of an Office program, or when an organization wants to design and build a new rocket
motor (or the whole rocket!) for the next venture into space.

There are usually four, or five depending on who you talk to, stages or phases in a project
timeline. In the broadest sense, these are at the most basic level of organization for a project.

1. Initiation, where the need for the project is noted, the goals set, and the paperwork started.
This often includes a project charter, or basic outline of the project.

2. Planning, during which the specifics are hammered out, the time and budget agreed on, and
the resources made available. The project plan, the equivalent of the term paper to the outline of
the charter, is finalized. It can include, or be accompanied by, a scope statement, which is often
necessary to mark the “borders” of the project (about which more shortly).

3. Execution, wherein the tasks are done by the resources to get the project done. This is usually
the longest-time part of the project. Which ties in with:

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12 Lesson 1: Groundwork

4. Monitoring/Feedback, whose purpose is pretty straightforward—to make sure the execution
is going more or less on plan. “Keeping the circus lurching happily along,” as someone once
said. This is also the phase which frequently is bundled with the previous one, hence the
occasional discussion about four versus five main stages.

5. Closing, at which point the deliverables are delivered, the final paperwork done, the last
payments made (and possibly the end-of-project party happens). It has been pointed out, though,
that some of the most potentially serious problems can arise from the simple matter of forgetting
to officially sign the deliverable(s) over to the client. Those technicalities can be a bear.

A project also has to normally deal with at least three major constraints, of which changing any
one will often affect the others. They are Scope, Time, and Cost.

If we think of it as a three-legged stool, we can see how this might be. If we add (or take away)
time, we have to add or remove cost (budget) and/or scope (how much we can accomplish) to
level the seat again. An old semi-joke says it all: “Quick, cheap, good—I can give you any two.”
There are often other things which come into play, but these are the three biggies most projects
have to be aware of.

The most insidious thing which can give a project trouble is “scope creep.” No, not a creepy
person with a telescope—the creeping upward or outward of the scope of the project. Or as the
cliché puts it, “Everyone has to get their two cents in.” People, departments, or groups will try to
tweak a project to get something else done which sort of, but doesn’t really, connect to the
project, or they’ll try to get the project to get more done for the same amount of time or money.
A scope statement can help by including clearly defined limits, or borders, stating what the
project is for, and what it’s not for. Most businesses don’t have this problem every time, but
better to be prepared.

Lastly, we want to understand that there are a few commonly-accepted jobs or positions in most
projects, even if the terms we use here don’t always show up.

The project manager is the Big Kahuna, the person who normally acts as the go-to, the captain
of the ship. Keeps an eye on the people, the money, the timeline, and so forth. If a company is
smart, they’ll let the PM have the authority to do what s/he needs to do to get the project done,
and trust them to do it.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 13
The sponsor(s) will be the manager of the project manager, as it were. The person (or persons)
who authorized the project, and who delegated the main authority to the PM.
You’ll almost always have at least one stakeholder. In most situations, this is the client, the
person or group for whom the project is being run, and the recipient of the deliverables.
And there are the team members, the folks who actually get the tasks done. They are most
frequently listed as the main resources in a project, and they definitely have a place in the
program, as we will see.
These positions can be fluid. In some museums, for example, the sponsor and stakeholder might
be the same department or patron for a project or exhibit. It’s not uncommon for some
organizations to combine two or three of these in one person or group. But for program and class
purposes, it helps to remember that going at the project with some routine terms and methods can
help put the plan together and firm up who does what when, and how.

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Topic B:
The Program Layout—Navigation

Microsoft Office® Project® is a project-management program, officially part of the Office suite,
though it is often loaded separately as not everyone is a project manager. Unlike some of the
other Office programs, Project is specialized. Though it’s a database program deep down inside,
it is definitely not generic. It is specifically built to help create and update project data, and do
several kinds of analysis so the project manager (which I’ll occasionally abbreviate as PM) can
keep on top of things. It allows the PM to view the project in many different ways to understand
the different aspects of what’s going on within the project. Using those different views is one of
the key features and ideas behind mastering the program.
The Gantt Chart is usually the default view. Invented by Henry Gantt in the 1910s (!), it has
proven a useful way to simultaneously handle text and graphical data on a project, and is
therefore often the most used.
We’ll look at the most common views first, and see where to put the items we need to make the
project go. Later we’ll look at some other things which might or might not come into play at the
beginning.
To start with, we’ll open the program and get a look at navigating and understanding its
structure.

DON’T-GO-CRAZY SIDE TIP:
Double-clicking any of the Ribbon tabs except the File tab will cause the Ribbon
to fold up, or collapse. When it’s folded, a SINGLE click on any tab will open it
temporarily while you select a command. It will then fold away again. (This is to
save on screen space for all you laptop users.) Double-clicking any tab other than
the File tab will again lock the Ribbon in the open position. (This is so in all the
Office programs. It drives some people a little nuts at first, so be aware.)

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 15
Exercise 1-1:
Opening the Program, Learning the Layout
1. On the Windows Desktop, click the Start button (usually at bottom left).
2. Scroll through the list of programs at left to either M (for Microsoft Office) or P (for
Project); when you find Microsoft Project, click it. The program should start after a few
seconds.
3. When Project starts, it may show you one of two things: Either a list of templates we
can start with under New, or a blank project. If you get the list of templates, just click
Blank Project for now. (We’ll talk about templates later.) It should open to show us the
Gantt Chart view—take a look at the left edge of the screen to make sure.

4. Move the pointer onto the Ribbon at the top, and click a few ribbon tabs, and you’ll
see they work the same way as in any other Office program. The Ribbon is divided into
tabs, and each tab into named groups, for ease of use.
5. Double-click one of the Ribbon tabs (other than the File tab) to see the ribbon fold
away. Click a tab once to open the Ribbon, wait a few seconds, then click it once more.
The Ribbon should again fold up. Double-click the tab to lock the Ribbon open again.
6. The easiest way to change views is to click the View tab in the Ribbon, and then look
at the groups on the left, the Task Views group and the Resource Views group.

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16 Lesson 1: Groundwork

7. The Gantt Chart button should be “pushed” or highlighted at left, which tells us it’s the
current view, in addition to the name on the left edge of the screen about halfway down.
8. If we click the Resource Sheet button in the Resource Views group, we switch over to
that view, where we would add the people and things to get the tasks done.

9. You may notice there are one or two tabs in the Ribbon whose names change when
we change views—Gantt Chart Tools becomes Resource Sheet Tools, and so on.
That’s normal. The program is making the tools we need available up there depending
on what we’re doing, and we’ll explore them as we go.
10. If we click the Gantt Chart button (the icon above the words “Gantt Chart”) in the
Task Views group, we return to the Gantt chart, and we can see it’s divided into a left
and right half. The left side is for text, the right for graphics. We enter text and numbers
like start and end dates on the left, and see the graphics update for them on the right.
11. We’ll go ahead and open a file to see what the general approach would be for this.
We’ll click the File tab, then move to and click the Open command.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 17
12. Navigate to the place you unzipped your exercise files (as discussed at the
beginning of the courseware manual), go into the folder for Lesson 1, and open the file
called Typical Commercial Construction L1.

13. The left side shows our tasks and subtasks in order, like the outline for a term paper
or research paper. Indented items are lower-level, or detail tasks. Higher-level items are
called summary tasks. So a summary task is composed of detail tasks as an engine is
built from individual parts. Task name, duration, start and finish dates are all fields in
which we would enter or edit data for a task.
(The Project Summary Task, which we turn on with the checkbox in the Gantt Chart Tools
Format tab, Show/Hide group on the right, lets us see project-level start/finish, duration, and
other data.)
14. The divider line between the left and right sides can be dragged either way to show
more or less information as we like. Try moving your pointer onto it, and when you get
the double-sideways arrow, <-||->, you can drag. We’ll use this later.
15. If we change the duration of a task on the left, the length of the bar on the right
should change to show this. Click the Duration for Task 2, Receive notice to proceed
and sign contract, type 6, and tap Enter.

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18 Lesson 1: Groundwork

16. You may see a warning symbol show up nearby, but don’t worry about it right now.
Over on the right, you should see the blue bar in that row gets longer—this means the
task will take more time. If you now Undo, Ctrl-Z, the bar should get shorter again, and
the warning will disappear.
17. If we now click the View tab, look in the Resource Views group, and click Resource
Sheet, we’ll see where we would enter data for the resources. Right now, some of them
are bold and in red, which means they’re overallocated—basically having to do
overtime. We’ll see how to fix that later.

18. But if we click any space here (you can think of them as being like the cells in an
Excel worksheet) we can type or change any data we need to. Names, resource types,
pay rates—it all goes here.
In addition to the switchability of the views from the Ribbon, there are usually a few buttons for
this on the right side of the Status Bar, at the bottom of the screen (see illustration for Step 3).
We’ll check those out in a bit.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 19

Topic C:
Some Useful Program Options

As in most Office programs, we use the Options dialog box to set the workings up as we want or
need them. And we get to the dialog the same way here as in the other members of the Office
suite: We go to the File tab and click on the Options command near the bottom of the list.
The main difference is, we can set some options differently for different projects. So when we
look at some of the categories, we want to make sure which project is selected in the drop-down
lists. This can include “New Projects,” meaning we can set options for future projects and save
some time. We don’t have to look at every category right off, but there are a few which are
helpful even for beginning users to know about. Streamlining project management is, for a PM,
worth its weight in gold.

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20 Lesson 1: Groundwork
Exercise 1-2:
Using the Options Dialog Box
1. To open the dialog, all we have to do is click the File tab on the left side of the
Ribbon, move down and click the Options command at bottom.

2. As is often the case, in the General category, setting the ScreenTip style to “Show
Feature Descriptions in ScreenTips” is a good idea. We don’t have to scratch our heads
as often.
3. Looking down a bit, we can set the default Project View. Having it be the Gantt Chart
is highly recommended, as we use this view quite a bit, and it’s one of the easiest to
understand right off.
4. Switching to the Schedule category on the left (by clicking), we can get to a few of
those drop-down lists mentioned earlier.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 21

5. Wherever we see the name of our current project file (Typical Commercial
Construction L1), we note there’s a drop-down arrow. This is how we can set the
options either for this project, any others we have open, or, as the drop-down says, All
New Projects. There’s no one right way to do this sort of thing, but knowing we can set
things the way we’ll use them most of the time is certainly helpful.
6. Among the items we may want to set are the Calendar options, like start and end
times, hours per day, days per month, and so on.
7. Further down (we can use the scrollbar on the right side of the dialog), we come to
“Scheduling options for this project.”

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22 Lesson 1: Groundwork

8. We’ll get a better understanding of these later, but I’ll mention now that “New tasks
created” and “New tasks are effort driven” will figure into some of our work.
9. We also want to be aware of how we enter Duration. We can go with Days, for now. If
you think about what the usual length of a task in your projects would be, you can figure
out what unit to set here. (We measure the size of a computer screen in inches, but a
road trip in miles, and the height of a house in feet. This is the kind of thinking we need.)
If we then type the number 5, it would mean five days, without having to type the unit or
the abbreviation. (Time saver!)
10. If you hover your pointer over the little “i-in-a-circle” next to some of the items, you’ll
get information popups to learn more.
11. In the Save category, we can make sure the computer knows where to put the files,
how often to auto-save (which is really important in business situations—every ten or
fifteen minutes is good), and what file format to use, though this isn’t too big a deal now
as most people are using at least the 2013 version of the program. Any version from
there on up can read current-generation files.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 23
12. And let’s not forget the Quick Access Toolbar category. It’s easy to move items from
left to right, from storage to active or vice versa, as it were, simply by double-clicking an
item in either list. And at the top of the left-hand list, we have the drop-down to choose
which category of storage items to look through.

13. After we finish going through these, and adding, removing, or otherwise changing
the things we need to, we can click OK (or Cancel) at the bottom right of the box.

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24 Lesson 1: Groundwork

Topic D:
A Few Project Essentials and Settings

Within the Project window itself, there are a few other items we can get a look at to further ease
the process of assembling the project. Some are shortcuts, some are just convenient tidbits, a few
are real gold nuggets. But the more you know about the program and its functionality, the more
straightforward it is to do the work.
As with most Microsoft Office programs, there are a few ways to do things like switch views,
turn visible features on or off, save files, and otherwise work. There’s no one right way to do any
of this, but if you take the time to go through all the techniques, shortcuts, and keyboard combos,
you can make an informed choice on which way works best for you.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 25
Exercise 1-3:
Learning Some In-Window Settings and Other Views
1. Coming back to the main window, we’re now going to see a few other tools in the
toolbox. If we go to the left edge of the Resource Sheet, where the name tells us we’re
in that view, we can right-click on or near the name and take a look at the pop-up menu
for a shortcut.

2. If we select, say, Gantt Chart, we return to our usual starting point. But we also note
there’s a choice in the pop-up which says “View Bar” at the very bottom. If we click that,
we get a vertical bar with a bunch of icons for all the regular views. A scroll arrow
appears at the top or bottom of it as needed to get to the others.

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26 Lesson 1: Groundwork

3. Now we can select any view we want from the list of icons. And if we either scroll to
the bottom of the list or right-click a blank spot within it, we can click “More Views,” and
get the complete list.

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Lesson 1: Groundwork 27

4. We’ll cancel out of there for now—the list is so long it would take a while to go
through, and we won’t need all of the views for class.
5. Finally, we can again right-click the View Bar (at a blank spot) to bring back the pop-
up, and click View Bar at bottom to turn it off. If your screen is big enough, you might
find using the View Bar to your taste. Give it a try later, if you like.
6. The Status Bar, at the bottom of the window, is also a helpful item. It does slightly
different things depending on what view you’re in, but you can always right-click in the
middle of it to see what’s available. In the pop-up menu, you can click to check or
uncheck an item you want or don’t want.

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28 Lesson 1: Groundwork
7. And in most cases, you’ll probably want to leave the View Shortcuts (next to last in
the menu) on, as they provide a very quick way to jump to the main views we work with.
The shortcuts are on the right side of the Status Bar, along with the Zoom Slider, which
works when there’s something to zoom in or out of as we’ll see later.

8. It’s actually good to try hovering the pointer on various items, such as the buttons in
the Ribbon tabs, to see the screen tips. Or to right-click on almost any part of the
program window, to see what shortcuts are available from the pop-up menus. And
leafing through the Help, which is now found under the Help tab on the Ribbon, along
with the “Tell me what you want to do” space (in the 2016 version), or the Help button at
top right (in the 2013 version), will always be a good idea. Just learning the keyboard
shortcuts for the things you do regularly is a useful step.
9. We can close the file (File tab, Close command) and save, or not, as you like. Going
with the file name provided by the template is good, and you can add the word
“Complete” on the end to know we’ve finished.

Having navigated around a little, and seen the essentials of the program layout, along with
learning some of the background behind it and the principles it’s based on, we’ll go into the next
lesson and see how we build a project from the ground up.
Don’t hesitate to re-read and practice each lesson’s material before going into the next. Even if
this stuff isn’t super difficult, it may take a little time to fully absorb it. And jotting down notes
somewhere, for things you figure you’ll need to keep in the forefront, won’t hurt either.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 29

Lesson 2: Starting a New Project

In this lesson, you will be introduced to:
1 Using a Project Template
2 Setting the Project Properties
3 Creating and Applying a Project Calendar

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30 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project

How do we start a new project?
Should we use a Project template?
How do we set starting or ending dates?
How do we create and apply a calendar?

Just as in cooking, there’s actually a recipe of sorts for starting a project. When making a meal,
we have to check and see we have, or need to buy, the ingredients; we need to gather them on the
counter; read the recipe; and finally cook the meal.
When we create a file in Microsoft Project, we can also compare to building a house. Clearing
the land, running power and water to the site, building the foundation, and so on, all have to be
done more or less in order. If we skip a step, or forget something, we can usually fix it, but not
without some delay.
So when starting the project file, we need to do some essential things. Deciding to use a template
to speed things up, or not. Specifying the start or end date. Adding some description-type info, if
need be. And setting up the calendar, which dictates the schedule and should be in place before
anything else, so we know when we can work.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 31

Topic A:
Using a Project Template

When we work with a program like this one, even if we have some project management
experience, templates can be a big help. As with prefab houses, the parts are already built and
simply have to be moved to the site and put together. So if we have a number of projects of a
similar nature, we can call up (or even create and later call up) a template, “tear off a copy,” and
rock and roll. Fill in the blanks, or modify what needs modifying, and we’re most of the way
there.
Sometimes a template for what we’re doing doesn’t exist; occasionally, some companies prefer
their users not have templates installed for security reasons. Regardless, it’s a good idea to know
how to start completely from scratch, since we have to do it once in a while.
The good news, though, is that not only is the program normally installed with a generous set of
templates, company permitting, but one can find gobs of user-made templates online. A basic
web search can yield hundreds if not thousands of results. You can search from within the
program, to go even faster.
Many templates are quite generic—they only give very basic or general layouts for a project. But
this is normal, since templates have to accommodate a wide range of uses. So when we use one,
we usually have to do at least some edits, cleanup, adding, and removing of things. Having some
idea of this jotted down somewhere can help. It sounds so twentieth-century, but it works.
IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE:
There’s one item we’ll be discussing later on which may show up when we open some templates
and other files. It’s called the Timeline, and it usually shows up just under the Ribbon. Until we
get to it later in the course, I’m going to turn it off as a standing procedure, to save space on
screen and allow us to see and learn about it in context. That’s why you won’t see it in this
manual until its topic comes up. To do this, you can go to the View tab on the Ribbon, move to
the Split View group at the right, and un-check Timeline.

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32 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
Exercise 2-1:
Starting a New Project with a Template
1. Having closed any other open files, we’re going to start a completely new project. If
all we wanted to do was start from scratch, we could click the File tab, then click New,
and click Blank Project.

2. We would then start filling in task and resource data, and do all the other things we
needed to build the framework. Instead, we’ll use a template to help plan a commercial
construction project.
3. Scroll down the list of templates to see if you have one called Commercial
Construction. If so, click it once and go to Step 7.
4. If you don’t, go up top to the space which says “Search for online templates.” Click in
there and type “commercial,” or “commercial construction.” (It’s not case-sensitive.)
Then, tap Enter.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 33

5. This should bring up the template we want after a few seconds, if you’re online.
6. Either way, once we have the Commercial Construction template visible, we need to
click it once to use (or download) it in Project.
7. We’ll likely get a dialog box asking us what start date we want. For demonstration,
we’ll click in the date space and select next Monday, and then click the Create button at
bottom. (You can type a date in, if you like.)

8. Though we would still have some work to do, we now have a framework for our
construction project. Take a moment, if you want, and scroll vertically in the Gantt chart

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34 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
to see the basic plan. You can also drag the divider between the left and right sides of
the Gantt to view whichever side more easily.
9. We’ll go ahead and save the file. You can use Ctrl-S, the Save button in the Quick
Access Toolbar, or the File tab Save command. We’ll navigate to the Lesson 2 folder
and save the file there; I’ll call it “New Construction Plan L2.”

COOL TIP:
Whenever you want to make sure you can see almost all of the right-side
graphics, which can come in handy later, there’s a shortcut you can use. In the
View tab on the Ribbon, you can go to the Zoom group on the right, and click the
“Entire Project” button. The right side bars showing duration and sequence will
then all fit in the space, so you won’t have to scroll the right side of the Gantt
horizontally—if you look at the bottom of the Gantt chart, it normally has two
horizontal scroll bars, one for each half. We’re more used to scrolling vertically
than horizontally.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 35

Topic B:
Setting the Project Properties

There are a few places we want to put important project information and set some essential
details. One is the Project Information dialog box, which we get to under the Project tab. There
we enter the start or finish date of the project, and make the choice of calendar, which we’ll
discuss in the next topic.
Another is the Advanced Properties box, where we can not only give others a quick summary of
the project but add a number of items which most businesses require these days.
Usually, we schedule a project from the start date, because it’s a little less complicated to adjust
the timeline from start to finish rather than the reverse. Sometimes, though, there will be a reason
to schedule backward from the finish date. One is that the project may have what has been called
a “drop-dead-line,” where the finish date is a must. Launching some kinds of big ships, for
example, has to take place on a high tide so there’s enough water under the ship when it
launches. Miss the date, and wait two weeks. Another reason might be that a company simply
has policy, for good reasons, to work this way. And once in a while, we may not have a concrete
start date, but we may have at least a rough idea of when we need to finish.
We can’t set both start and finish dates in the Project Information box, however. We choose the
one or have it chosen by the sponsor and/or stakeholders—the other is dictated by the tasks’
length and relationships.
It is possible to set the start or finish date in the past, as well as the future. Why? Documenting a
successful project can allow similar projects to run more smoothly later. When creating a
template, this is exactly how we can set one up with a good chance of it being a big help. “Don’t
mess with success,” after all.

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36 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
Exercise 2-2:
Setting Properties in the Project Information Box
1. Even though we already set the start date in the building plan, we’ll double-check it in
the Project Information dialog box. We’ll click the Project tab in the Ribbon, and left of
center, we can go to the Properties group, and click the Project Information button.

2. At the top left of the box, we can see the start date displayed as next Monday. Below
that, we see the finish date is grayed out, as we can’t set both at once. The finish is
controlled by the length of the project based on the tasks. We could click the drop-down
right under that and select Project Finish Date, but there’s no need.
3. We also see the Current date and Status date spaces to the right. We can tell the
program to make the Current Date any one we want, if we were documenting a
completed project or testing some time-related features. We’ll see what the Status Date
does later.
4. If the boss informs us the start date needs to be pushed back a week, i.e. a week
from Monday, all we need to do here is click the drop-down for Start Date, click the right
arrow on the calendar if necessary, and select the following Monday. Or we can just
type the date in without using the drop-down, if we prefer. We can OK out of the box
after that.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 37
5. We now take a look at the Start and Finish columns, and we’ll note a couple of things
have happened. One is that in the first row of data, the dates will have changed—the
start because we changed it, and the finish to move out a week in response. Another is
that there’s a pale blue highlight stretching down those columns, to indicate a change in
the highlighted dates (which happens to be all of them in this case). This “domino effect”
highlight goes away when we continue working, but it’s there to make sure we know
something important happened.

6. It’s a good idea to save now. (Ctrl-S, Click the File tab and go to Save, or any other
method you like.) And we should save whenever we make any significant changes in
the file. Even with Auto-Save on, staying in the habit means less chance of a glitch
messing up our work.

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38 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
Exercise 2-3:
Entering Information in the Advanced Properties Box
1. To get to the other place we routinely put early information, we can go to the File tab
again, make sure Info is selected on the left, and look over toward the Project
Information on the right side.
2. If you look closely, you’ll see the label “Project Information” isn’t just a label—it’s a
drop-down. (Aha! The hidden doorway!) We can click on it, and select Advanced
Properties in the list.

3. We then open the dialog box. Of the five tabs at top, we usually see only the info on
the first, General, from the desktop level. And we can’t change this stuff from inside the
box.
4. If we click the tab called Summary, the second one, we get a bunch of places we can
put info in. And we want to.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 39

5. At least a couple of these fields can be used to tell other managers what’s going on, if
need be. Author, Manager, Company are all helpful to fill in. But the really useful one is
the Comments field. We can type (or copy and paste) a capsule summary of the project
in there, so it isn’t in the way of the bona fide data in the actual project plan. And if we
type more than a few lines of data, the Comments space grows a scroll bar and lets us
put as much in there as we want, more or less.
6. The other tab we can work with is the Custom tab. There, we can do two things. We
can add data for the existing properties by (a) clicking one, (b) setting the value type, if
need be, and typing the value, and (c) clicking Add up at the top right. Or even (d),
typing a custom value name at the top, and then proceeding from (b) as before.

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40 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project

7. We could, for example, click on “Checked by” in the list, click and type our initials in
the Value space, and then Add at top right.
8. This gets added to the list at bottom, which anyone can review in their copy of the
program. So we have the equivalent of a side pocket on the file “folder” which can store
what is sometimes called metadata, or “data about the data.” Sounds a little silly, but it’s
very useful to keep different kinds of information about a project organized.
9. After we finish adding stuff under Custom, we can OK out of the box, and we should
then save.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 41

Topic C:
Creating and Applying a Project Calendar

In ninety-nine percent of all projects, it is vital to create—and apply—a project-specific calendar
before adding tasks, resources, and relationships between them. Why? Because the calendar rules
the schedule, or timeline, of the project. It specifies the working hours, for the company overall if
not the resources. If (for example) company and government holidays are not included so non-
working hours are accounted for, the project will mistakenly be set up to allow work to appear
do-able when it isn’t, and the actual finish date will be incorrect—too early. Resources, too, can
have calendars, but they are usually based on the project calendar. So, again, this one has to be in
place first.
There are three calendars which come with the program:
Standard, whose work hours are 8 AM to 12 PM, and 1 PM to 5 PM Monday to Friday;
Night Shift, the most complex, 12 AM-3 AM, 4 AM-8 AM, 11 PM-12 AM Tuesday to Friday,
and 12 AM-3 AM, 4 AM 8 AM Saturday;
24 Hours, where the work time is literally 24 hours, 7 days a week.
But we can copy these and modify the copies, or create our own. Most people make copies.
Creating a project calendar takes a little work. But once it’s done, and clicked into place, the rest
of the work is straightforward. And as we’ll see later, if a company project manager has created a
calendar which other projects can and should use, it can be copied to the other files with just a
few clicks, and allow any project to proceed with complete confidence that it’s got the timeline
on track.
There’s even a shortcut, of sorts, for holidays that repeat. We can tell the calendar about either
the date or the day of the month, for at least several years into the future, to take them into
account for a reasonably accurate schedule. And if there are occasional oddball days, such as
having the founder’s birthday as a half-day for a company party, we can handle it.

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42 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
Exercise 2-4:
Creating and Applying a Project Calendar
1. To start creating a calendar, we’ll go to the Project tab in the Ribbon, and click the
Change Working Time button in the Properties group.

2. When we open the dialog box, we see whatever calendar is currently in effect for this
project (usually the Standard calendar, if we just started creating a project).
3. Since we need to take a few holidays into account, and we don’t want to modify the
original Standard calendar, we’ll make a copy. We can click “Create New Calendar” at
the top right of the box, and tell the program how we want to handle this.

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 43

4. Any name is fine, but something like “Construction Calendar 2020” would be easy to
understand. We’ll type that for the name, and make sure the button for “Make a copy of
Standard calendar” is pushed below. Then we’ll click OK at bottom.
(We want to create the new calendar before modifying it for the same reason we’d need to build
a runway before we could land a jumbo jet. We want our place to put the custom date info.)
5. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll add just a few holidays which could affect the schedule.
They’ll go in the Exceptions space at bottom. The first one is Labor Day, which always
falls on the first Monday in September. We’ll scroll the calendar at the top by dragging
the scroll box or clicking the down arrow till we get to September, and clicking the first
Monday (in 2020, this would be the 7th).
6. Then, we click the first Name space under the Exceptions tab, and type the name of
the holiday. After which, we click the Start space just to the right.

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44 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
7. This does a couple of things. We’ve confirmed the date, and updated the calendar
above. If you now click a different day, say the 8th, you’ll see the color legend on left
tells us what’s going on. There’s the blue and gray tints to say Nonworking and
Exception. And if we click back on the 7th, and glance up to the right, the message
“September 7, 2020 is nonworking.” appears there.
8. Next, we need to make this holiday repeating. So we’ll go to the “Details…” button at
the right of the Exceptions area, and click it.

9. On the left, we want to click the “Yearly” button under “Recurrence Pattern,” and set
the controls on the right to “The First Monday of September” as shown.
10. At bottom right, just above the OK and Cancel buttons, we want to have the repeat
end after five occurrences, so we use the spinner arrows or type the appropriate
number. Then, we’ll OK out of the box.
11. We can now see the end date for this holiday has changed, and we’re ready to put
in the others:

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Lesson 2: Starting a New Project 45

Thanksgiving/Black Friday: The last Thursday and Friday of November—
which we can select by dragging in the calendar at top from the one day to
the other.
Christmas: December 25th.
12. But wait! The company Christmas party is the afternoon of the 24th, and the boss
wants the AM to be regular work. How to handle it?... Well, what we’ll do is select
December 24th in the scrolling calendar, click under Christmas in the Exceptions space,
and type “Company Xmas party,” to start with. We click the Start space to the right, and
then the Details button again.
13. In the Details box, we go up top, and click “Working Times” to get specific.

14. Right below, we now see the work periods for that day. We click the number 2 on
the left of the second work period, and tap the Delete key. And we’ve got it. We can now
OK out to the main Calendar box.
15. If we click on the 23rd, we can see the edit for the 24th showing the blue for an
Exception day, but not the gray for a Nonworking day; it isn’t nonworking, but it is non-
ordinary.
And yes, the days are out of order in the Exceptions space, but it won’t affect how the calendar
works. If you click the Work Weeks tab, then click back on Exceptions, you’ll see the program
puts it right.
16. We can now OK out of the Change Working Time box.
17. Now comes the other critical step. We have to apply the calendar to the project, so it
knows we want to use this calendar as our “base” for timeline calculations. It’s not hard.
We go to the Project tab, and click Project Information in the Properties group.

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46 Lesson 2: Starting a New Project
18. If we click the drop-down on the right for the choice of Calendar, we can select the
one we created. (You can see why giving it a recognizable name is a good idea.) And
then OK out.
19. We may see the overall duration of the project change; sometimes we may not. In
our example, we didn’t specifically set all holidays to repeat during the run of the project
which is why it may not change here. But more often, the duration will change when we
apply a new calendar, and if one compares the before-and-after, it’s noticeable.
20. We can save and close this file now.
You can probably begin to see the step-by-step nature of the work, and the mindset involved.
And the next step, after getting the foundation in, is to start framing the house, rigging up the
utilities, and otherwise getting the bonafide construction done.
Turns out, we can add either tasks or resources first, because the program’s main concern is
having both ready for the assignment of the one to the other. But it’s more usual to get the tasks
in earlier—it’s sometimes easier to see what kinds and numbers of resources will be needed to
get them done that way. So in the next lesson, that’s what we’ll do. And we’ll try a little bit of
adding them in a blank project first, to see how it differs from working with a template.

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Lesson 3: Working with Tasks 47

Lesson 3: Working with Tasks

In this lesson, you will be introduced to:
1 Inserting and Modifying Tasks
2 Linking Tasks and Setting Relationships
3 Inserting Summary Tasks and Milestones
4 Using Manual vs. Auto Scheduling

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48 Lesson 3: Working with Tasks

How do we insert and work with tasks?
What is “task linking?”
Why are task relationships important?
How do we work with milestones and summary tasks?
Should we use Manual or Auto Scheduling for tasks?

Tasks are one of the “must-haves” when we create a project, the things we have to do to get it
done. They’re the steps in the recipe for completing the project, and like a recipe, we have to
account for all of them and get them in the right order. We also have to make sure that if there
are any “make-aheads” in the recipe, they’re accounted for as well. Luckily, if we forget a step
early on, we can insert it in the right place, or we can move a step we put in the wrong place. Or
even delete a step we realize we didn’t need. So we’ve got some latitude in the process of putting
the plan into writing.
We can treat it like a term paper, or research paper. Start with the main idea, jot down the
primary points, then the things which support those, and so on, indenting as you go to clarify
what belongs to what. It’s called “top-down project planning,” and it’s the usual method for
doing this. Since the left side of the Gantt chart (our normal starting place) is similar in
appearance and workings to an Excel spreadsheet, inserting, deleting, and moving things around
using Excel-ish methods is quite straightforward.
Marking off important points in the project, and grouping tasks together for plan-ability, will
allow the team to see the critical bits, so they have a clear idea of what to focus on. But the
project manager will also need to think about which tasks have some time-flexibility, and which
ones can’t. As long as the project has enough pre-start prep time, this won’t often be a problem.

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Lesson 3: Working with Tasks 49

Topic A:
Inserting and Modifying Tasks

Adding tasks to a project is easy. The key thing to remember is, make sure of where you’re
adding them in. There are a few methods for doing it, and you can use any one you like. But
remember that Project assumes you know where you want what.
Modifying tasks is pretty easy too. Again, be careful to select the right item before making
changes. Yes, we can undo, but we don’t want to have to very often. Deleting tasks, ditto. Even
moving them around is not a problem, and that happens fairly often when we first start putting a
project together.
We’ll start by doing a little practice with a blank project—using the general steps for building a
house.

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50 Lesson 3: Working with Tasks
Exercise 3-1:
Inserting and Arranging Basic Tasks
1. As we mentioned we could earlier, we’ll start with a blank project—we can click the
File tab, make sure we’re on New in the menu, and click Blank Project. (If we see a
message about new tasks being in Auto or Manual mode, we’ll ignore it for now. We’ll
just make sure we’re looking at the Gantt Chart view.)
2. We’ll click the first space under the Task Name header, and type “Clear the Property”
(without the quotes) and tap Enter. Some other stuff to the right might fill in with
defaults.
3. Continuing in the same manner, we’ll enter “Run Power and Water,” “Bring In
Building Materials,” “Dig Foundation,” “Build Concrete Forms,” and Rig Rebar.” We
should then see something similar to the picture here.

4. What if we need to deal with the rebar before we build the forms? Can we just drag
and drop? Yes, indeed. We’ll go to the left side of the window and click the number 6,
which is the Task ID number. When we click, we select the whole line—the key to the
drag-and-drop in this situation.
5. The pointer should now show a big arrow with four small ones at the point of the big
one. This is the move pointer, and it works just as it would in Excel.

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