Microsoft Project

Lesson 8: Using Different Project Views 151

Topic A:
Creating and Using Custom Views

Calling up any of the standard views in Project is a snap. You can go to several different menus
in the View tab, click a dropdown, and either select one of the regular views or go to the More
Views dialog box and choose from the list.
Creating a custom view, whether a single (one panel) or combo (dual panel) is pretty
straightforward. We mainly pick from among the existing views, and occasionally customize
what one of them is showing, then give the resulting custom version a name, and we’ve got it.
It’s quite alright to experiment with which views to incorporate, and to even just sit down with
pencil and paper to write out the need for a custom view first—it’s like planning a project in
general. What you get out of it depends in part on what you put into it, so planning things like
this can really make it as much of a cakewalk as any project can be.

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Exercise 8-1:
Creating a Custom Single View
1. First, we’ll open the ready file for this lesson. With our usual navigation, File->Open,
we can browse as needed to our Lesson 8 folder, and open the file called Continuing
Commercial Construction L8.
2. One possible kind of view we can use pretty broadly would be a Gantt chart filtered
for incomplete tasks. So we can start by setting it up.
3. Making sure we have the Gantt Chart view showing, we can go to the View tab, click
the Other Views dropdown either in the Task Views or Resource Views group, and
select More Views. (This is where we get the complete list of all available views, too. Try
some later, if you like.)

4. We want to click the New… button at the right, to give us the choice of Single or
Combination view. We’ll go with Single this time, and click OK.
5. In the next dialog, we have some other things to set up. First, the name. Let’s call this
Gantt Incomplete Tasks for simplicity’s sake.
6. The Screen setting should be Gantt Chart.
7. The choice of Table needs to be Entry, which gives us the default data on the left
side of the Gantt. For our purposes, this will work.
8. Though we won’t use Group, we have to put something in there, so we’ll open the
dropdown and select No Group. (They’re usually in alphabetical order.)
9. The Filter choice is the important one here—we want Incomplete Tasks, to fulfill the
purpose of the view. We should end up with this:

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10. We can OK out of the box when we’re done. This takes us back to the More Views
box, in which our new one should now be visible, again alphabetically. We can make
sure it’s selected, and click Apply below.
11. We might have to right-click a task, select Scroll to Task, and/or Zoom to Entire
Project as we’ve already done a couple of times, but we can then see exactly what we
asked for—a list of incomplete tasks only, shown in Gantt Chart view. And the name we
chose is displayed at the left edge of the screen.
12. We’ll save, and continue the next part in the next exercise.

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Exercise 8-2:
Creating and Using a Custom Combination View
Having created the custom single view we want—and can use by itself or with a combo—we’ll
now tell the program about what we want in the combo. Yes, we had to do the previous part first,
because we wanted to customize and we had to set up the custom bits before we could use them
anywhere else. The good news is, the hard part is done.
1. To create the combo view, we start by going back to More Views, as we did in the
previous exercise, Steps 3 and 4. But when we get to the choice of Single or
Combination view, we’ll click the latter, and OK out.
2. The dialog box now asks for a name, the Primary, and the Details pane. For the
name, we’ll put in something like Gantt Incomplete with Details. (Any variation is fine,
just so we know what it’s doing.)
3. The dropdowns should be set for Incomplete Tasks Only (our custom single view)
and Task Details Form, which will let us do something pretty neat—click a task in the
Gantt and see additional info about it.
4. As with the previous dialog, we can check the Show in menu or not, as we choose.
This does just what you’d expect—allows the item to be easily found in a menu, as the
name implies. We’ll see where shortly. We should end up with things set like this:

5. When we OK out, and get back to the More Views box, we should again see our new
view listed. Right near its buddy, in fact. We can select it and Apply at bottom, and
check out the result.
6. Now, if we select a task by name in the upper half of the view area, we see pertinent
info in the lower half, including some things the Gantt normally doesn’t show. The
thinking is, we don’t want to overwhelm ourselves or anyone else with too much clutter,
so we divide it up some.

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7. As noted in the illustration, you can even drag the dividers around if you like, to show
as much or as little of each area as needed.
8. Oh, yeah…what about the “off” switch on all this? How do we get back to our
regularly scheduled view, say the Gantt chart? First, to turn off the lower windowpane,
we go to the View tab, and look on the right. The checkmark in the Split View group
called Details can be unchecked to turn off (but not delete) the lower piece.
9. Then, to revert to the regular ordinary Gantt, we go to the left side of the View tab,
and in the Task Views group, click the dropdown (the lower half) of the Gantt Chart
button, to find and click Gantt Chart under the Built-In section of the menu. And we’ll go
to the View tab, Data group, and set the Filter back to No Filter.
10. We’ll save at this point.
One question which occasionally pops up about features like this is, Can we use a custom view
in another file? We can indeed. The answer to how is going to be in a later lesson, but it’s pretty
easy once you know the recipe.

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Topic B:
The Network Diagram View

Many moons ago, in the world of Early Programming, there was a technique for figuring out
which steps went in which order and which decisions branched to what. It was called
“flowcharting,” and it’s still used today. It’s pretty much what it sounds like—a chart or diagram,
similar to an organization chart, which shows how a piece of code for a program should do
things. (You can easily run a web search and see dozens of examples.) The advantage to
knowing how to do this is, a flowchart can be used to code in many different programming
languages. It’s platform independent.
The related concept in Project is the Network Diagram view. It isn’t something we create
separately, though. It’s another way of looking at an existing project. What’s nice about it is it’s
primarily graphical, and in some ways less busy than the Gantt view. The best thing is, switching
between them is not a problem. They’re both just a way to work with the project.
So when we go to this view, we’re looking at the exact same info. We can even edit the project
in Network Diagram view, though it’s less common to do so, since there will be more info to
read about than we can see there.

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Exercise 8-3:
Working with the Network Diagram View
1. To switch to the Network Diagram, we simply go to the View tab, look on the left, and
click (surprise!) the left part of the Network Diagram button. (The right side dropdown
lets us get to other views, which we’ve already done.)

2. Usually, when we do this, we end up viewing one small portion of the diagram, so we
need to zoom out. We can use the Zoom controls at the right side of the Status Bar to
do this.

3. When we zoom most of the way out, we see a bunch of boxes connected by lines.
What’s going on is this:
Blue boxes are non-critical tasks, red are critical;
Slanted boxes are summary tasks, and have expander buttons to
allow us to expand or collapse the phases as we would in the Gantt
Chart view;
Rectangles are ordinary tasks;
Hexagonal boxes are milestones.
Furthermore, the boxes have lines inside them:
No line indicates a task not yet started;

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One diagonal line means a task in progress;
An “X” (two crossed lines) means a completed task.

You can use the horizontal and vertical scroll bars, and the zoom slider,
to examine various parts of the diagram.
The dashed lines running around behind the boxes show the pieces of paper
on which all this would be printed—it’s a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What
You Get) view.
4. To edit something in a box, such as the duration of Task 58, Strip forms from 2nd floor
slab, we would scroll to it (it’s near the center of the view), click the Dur(ation) space,
type, say, 3d for that many days, and hit Enter.

5. This can indeed affect subsequent tasks, so remember—this IS our real project
window. Active data, fully interactive, etc. just like any other view.
6. To add a task, we’ll drop one in right after Task 58. The technique is simply to move
the mouse into the task which acts as predecessor, hold down the mouse button, and
drag (usually) to the right, or down. Let go when you’re about an inch to the right of the
box, and a new one appears.

7. The new task box may appear some distance to the right and down from the one we
dragged out of. Follow the line right and/or down to it. When you get there, you can type

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Lesson 8: Using Different Project Views 159
in the task name, perhaps something like Clean up from form stripping, and set the
duration, say, 1 day.

8. If you like, you can zoom out to see both—you can do this before the creation of the
new box, too.
9. Note the task (ID) number in the new task, and switch to Gantt Chart view. You’ll see
the new task right where it should be.
10. You can remove the task, if you like. Right-clicking the name and selecting Delete
Task in the popup will do it. Since it has no tasks hooked to it as a predecessor, it won’t
affect the timeline either way.
11. Then, we can save.
One use I’ve heard mentioned for the Network Diagram view is having it printed out, whether on
a regular desktop printer or a giant-roll-of-paper plotter printer, and pinning it up in the project
manager’s office. This allows for a truly “big picture” view of the project, whereon the PM can
mark things off as done, make notes about particularly troublesome tasks, and otherwise keep a
running track of things all at once. Depending on the scope of the project, this sounds as if it has
some real possibilities.

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Topic C:
The Timeline

For a new user of Project, the Timeline, a separate window we can open or close above the Gantt
and other charts, is often ignored, as it doesn’t come into play during most planning, or even
some project executions. But once in a while, it can be helpful.
The most frequent situation in which the Timeline jumps into the limelight is when a PM has to
send some kind of subset of the project data to someone who doesn’t have a copy of the
program, or who wants to drop some basics into a PowerPoint® presentation. The Timeline then
functions as a sort of outline, a brief and compressed version of the project essentials.
Unlike some of the other views, it’s purely cosmetic. Putting things on it or taking things off it
won’t affect the schedule of the project, and moving things around on the Timeline can’t do so.
Which means we need not worry about experimenting with it, if we like.

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Exercise 8-4:
Displaying and Editing the Timeline
1. As we’re now back in Gantt Chart view, with all tasks displayed, we’re reminded we
have over a hundred tasks in this project. So we’ll go to the View tab, and over on the
right we’ll look in the Split View group to click the checkmark on for the Timeline.

2. If we examine what’s on there, we see almost all of the tasks are summary tasks—
the phases or major stages. But we can add or remove any task or subtask we want.
For example, we can go down to the Gantt, right-click the name of Task 2, Receive
notice to proceed… , and select Add to Timeline.
3. The problem, then, is the task is crowded into a small space by all the other stuff
already there. So we have to tell it to appear differently.

4. We can find the sliver of color which represents the task, right-click it, and tell it to
Display as Callout. Then, we move the pointer into it, hold down the mouse button, and
drag it wherever we think it’ll be easiest to read. We can’t change its location too much,
because that would change its dates, and we’d need to do that in the Gantt.

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5. If for some reason we want to remove something from the Timeline—and remember,
doing so will not delete the task from the Gantt—we simply right-click it in the Timeline
and select Remove from Timeline in the popup.

SLIGHTLY-TECH TIP:
If for some reason you prefer not to right-click too much, you can select a task in
the Gantt, go to the Task tab in the Ribbon, and click the Add to Timeline button
in the Properties group at right. But if you want to remove a task from the
Timeline, you’ll need to click somewhere in the Timeline space first, as the
corresponding Remove from Timeline button is in the Timeline Tools Format tab,
in the Current Selection group. All of which only appears when we are working in
the Timeline.
6. Once in a while, we want to change the text appearance in the Timeline. For
readability, product branding, or other reasons, this can be helpful. The Text Styles
button on the left side of the Timeline Tools Format tab is the way to do it.

7. We would normally want to change All, as the dropdown at top defaults to. But you
can experiment with changing different elements if you like. We can pick a slightly
smaller size of text, or a different style, as we like. Don’t forget to OK out at right when
you’re done.
8. We’ll save here.

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Lesson 8: Using Different Project Views 163
Exercise 8-5:
Using the Timeline in a PowerPoint® Presentation (Optional)
Turns out the Timeline, like some other parts of a project file, can be exported. Or in this case,
more precisely, copied and pasted. Since Project is proprietary, if one wants to look at the file,
one has to have a copy of the program. So exporting data in some fashion or other becomes
important. Luckily, the Timeline is easy to send out. (The other stuff we’ll take a look at
exporting later.)
1. If we need to put a copy of the Timeline in a Microsoft® PowerPoint® slide show, we
start in Project by clicking in the Timeline space, so as to have the appropriate tab
available in the Ribbon (Timeline Tools Format).
2. Then, over on the right, we can go to the Copy group, click the dropdown for Copy
Timeline, and select, in this case, For Presentation…and it looks like nothing happened.
Something did, though. As with most programs, copying something doesn’t give any
obvious indicators.

3. But now, if we open PowerPoint (I’ll use version 2016), make sure we have a blank
slide ready, and go to the Clipboard group under the Home tab on the left, we can click
the dropdown for Paste and hover on Picture. We see this gives us an exact paste of
what we copied, which avoids some reformatting changing the layout.

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4. Of course, this means we will need to be picky about which tasks we add to the
Timeline. As with many other elements, too much detail on this in a PowerPoint
presentation can easily overwhelm the viewers’ brains.
5. We can exit out of PowerPoint without saving, as this was a demonstration of the
basic process.
6. Back in Project, we can turn the Timeline feature off (View tab, Split View group at
right, uncheck Timeline), save under a new name (with the word “Complete” at the end,
for instance), and close the file.

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Lesson 9: Working with Reports 165

Lesson 9: Working with Reports

In this lesson, you will be introduced to:
1 Using Standard Reports
2 Creating a Custom Report
3 Using a Visual Report

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What are reports?
What kinds are available?
How do we create a custom report?
What can we put in it?
What is a Visual Report, and how do we create one?

Reports, like the Timeline we looked at earlier, are a way to let others see information from a
project we’re running. They allow us to export data, using charts and tables, so someone can
grasp the essentials of the project, whether at a given stage or overall at the end.
There are twenty built-in reports, which cover most of the main kinds of data we’d need to
summarize for anyone who needs to see the project data condensed. And there are custom
reports, which start with four basic frameworks and allow the user some latitude as to what goes
into them, and how it’s arranged.
Another type of report we can call up from Project is the Visual Report, which allows us to pass
project data to another program—Microsoft Office® Excel®—which can join the party and give
us charting capabilities which Project doesn’t have. This started a few versions ago, to let each
program in the Office suite do what it does best and let them cooperate when necessary. The
feature can even pass data to yet another program—Microsoft Office® Visio®, the structured
graphics program, when certain kinds of charts are needed.

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Topic A:
Using Standard Reports

Luckily, the default reports are a lot like the regular views of data. All the user has to do is go to
the Report tab, then the View Reports group on the left, and click the appropriate dropdown to
get to the category of report required.

• Dashboard reports show most of the major project indicators, such as incomplete tasks,
cost and other overviews, and work and resources statistics.

• Resource reports cover overallocated resources, which are often a critical issue if
anything is, and an overview of resource usage.

• Cost reports, predictably, cover things like overruns, resource and task costs, and earned
value.

• In Progress reports, as the name implies, talk about critical and late tasks, as well as
those that are slipping, and less dramatically, milestones.

We’ll take a look at a few of the most-used types.

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Exercise 9-1:
Calling Up Standard Reports
1. Let’s open our next preset file, Continuing Commercial Construction L9, in the usual
way—File->Open, and navigate as needed to the Lesson 9 folder.
2. The first report we’ll look at is the Project Overview. We’ll go to the Report tab, click
the dropdown for Dashboards, and select it there.

3. We immediately see some good news and some bad. The project is only 34%
complete, but officially, there are no late tasks. The % Complete table also informs us
which summary tasks are done, partly done, or not yet started.
It’s also true that in our class situation, we have not done as much updating as we would in the
real world. So the report is only as accurate as the data we give it, as mentioned earlier in the
course.
4. Jumping from report to report is fine—the program will let us do it just as if we were
changing views. The next one we want is Overallocated Resources, in the Resources
dropdown, just to the right of the Dashboards.

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5. And we do have some overallocations. But we can tell who, and when. So even
though it would fall to the project manager to do something about it, s/he can let the
stakeholders know and explain what course of action might be taken. Bringing in more
resources, stretching the schedule a little, re-allocating…any of these are possible.
6. We also want to see an In Progress report. Going back to the Report tab, and the
View Reports, we can click this and select Critical Tasks.

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7. Regardless of which ones are marked as complete, the report is straightforward. The
pie chart gives us the general status of tasks, and the table gives details. This is the
kind of report almost anyone can get the gist of at a glance. Which is the point.
8. We’ll go back to the Gantt chart (View tab, Task views group on left), and save.

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Topic B:
Creating a Custom Report

The standard reports included with Project are the result of much back-and-forth with users, and
are intended for most of what users normally do. But once in a while, there’s a need for
something tuned to a particular situation.
When we create a custom report, we start with one of four frameworks:

• Blank, where anything goes in terms of layout.
• Chart, wherein the star of the show is indeed a chart (with eight types to choose from).
• Table, for displaying a set of data in row-and-column format.
• Comparison, which uses two charts to put subsets of data side by side in graphic form.
As with charts in a couple of other Microsoft programs, additional tabs in the Ribbon will show
up with the tools to do the fine-tuning of the charts and tables we want in the report.
The chart types themselves work the same basic way. Column and bar charts for straight
comparison of quantities or values, line charts for changing values over time, radar charts for
cyclical variations, combo charts for separate but related value sets (number of books sold and
dollars brought in by those sales, for example), and so on.

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Exercise 9-2:
Creating a Custom Report
1. We’re going to start by updating our project’s progress again. Specifically, to the end
of the year (2020) in which a good chunk of it is taking place. To do this, we’ll go to the
Project tab, and in the Status group, we’ll click to bring up the Update Project dialog as
we did earlier.

2. We’ll set the first section to Update work as complete through 12/31/20. (“Set 0% -
100% complete” means “as complete as each task should be on this date”, which will
work for us.) We’ll OK out when it’s done.
3. On to the custom report. The Report tab, View Reports group as before is our goal,
and we’ll click New Report on the left to get to Blank, so we have as much latitude as
possible.

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4. For the report name, we can use something like End of 2020 Status Report, which
describes the purpose pretty well, and OK out. The chart name we wrote in now
appears at the top of the report.
The question of what exactly should go in the report is very open-ended. There are many “right”
answers, but a few points to consider would be:

• Charts would be best for displaying numerical data—quantities, values, trends.
• Tables are helpful for showing mostly text-type information, with related numbers

secondary.
• Graphics are okay, if used sparingly. Company logos or maps are common.
• Hyperlinks are viable, but one should bear in mind that if the report is printed, as opposed

to made a PDF, they can’t be followed from within the report.
5. We can simply insert a table or chart for starters. The program then allows us to
specify what data they should display. It’ll take a guess based on the project, but won’t
object if we make changes. So we’ll start with a chart. To do this, we go up to the
Report Tools Design tab, find the Insert group at left, and click Chart.

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6. In the Insert Chart box, Column should be the chosen default at left, and Clustered
Column the sub-choice in the middle. You can try others later if you like, but let’s go with
this for now. We can just OK it.
7. The chart is inserted, and the circles around the edge, also called selection handles,
tell us the chart is paying attention to us. This means we can change what’s in it. We do
this by going to the Field List on the right, and scrolling through the Select Fields list in
the middle.

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8. If we scroll down to where we can see the Work category, there should be some
checkboxes to indicate what’s on or off. We want to turn off one item we won’t need
here, namely “Work” (as opposed to “Actual Work” or “Remaining Work”).
9. Glancing over at the chart, we see we removed a set of columns and simplified things
a bit. We can also widen the chart, by grabbing one of the side handles and dragging
slowly outward. (This gives the text a little more room and improves readability.)
10. On the right side of the chart, we should see three square buttons. One should have
a paintbrush in it—this is the Chart Styles button, and we’ll click it.
11. Aside from the styles themselves, which we can get to in the Ribbon now that the
Chart Tools Design tab is there, we can choose a color scheme for the chart. The
second of the two sections in the popup from the Chart Styles button has a bunch of
different color schemes available. You can pick whichever appeals to you. (You might
need to click the paintbrush button again to close the popup.)

12. To insert a table, we follow the same basic procedure. The Report Tools Design tab
again is our source, specifically the Insert group, where we find and click the button for
Table. Again, the initial version can be easily modified.

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13. The table may need to be dragged down a little to stop it overlapping onto our chart.
It can be grabbed on the edge away from the handles, at bottom for instance, and
dragged down.
14. One kind of information tables in these reports are used for is to show how the
phases or stages of the project are going. To change the display, we go to the Field
List, which should again appear at the right side of the screen. In the list, we can look
toward the bottom. The item actually controlling the table’s data here is the Outline
Level dropdown, so we’ll click it and select Level 1. That’s the highest-level tasks aside
from the project summary task.
15. Then, we can sort on Percent Complete, by going to the very bottom of the Field List
and dropping the Sort By list, selecting % Complete, and making sure the order button
(just to the right) shows A-Z, rather than Z-A. It should end up more or less like this:

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16. To add a graphic, we can click the Images button in the Insert group, navigate to the
location of the file, and double-click it.
(If you have a small graphic you want to use, go right ahead. Project can read several of the most
common graphic formats for this. There’s one called L9 Project Icon with the exercise files,
which you can drop in if you don’t have any others you like.)
17. Once it’s in, you can resize it by dragging one of the corners inward or outward, and
move it by grabbing it near the middle and dragging wherever you think it’ll look right.
18. The graphic can even be turned into a hyperlink by right-clicking and selecting Link
in the popup. The dialog box gives us a variety of places and things to link to; if we want
to go to a Web page, the full address can be copied from the browser and pasted in by
right-clicking in both places. (This is a good idea, since it removes the worry about typos
in the address taking us to the wrong place.) When you’re done entering the address,
OK out.

19. You can enter any valid web address, if you want to test it. Click away from the
graphic, then click on it to test your link.
20. There are one or two other elements which can go in a report, but these are the
ones most people use. We’ll go back to the Gantt Chart, and save the file.
21. If we want to use the report again later, we go back to the Report tab, and click the
Custom dropdown in the View Reports group. Our report will be there.

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Topic C:
Using a Visual Report

The Visual Reports feature has a little background behind it.
A few versions of the Microsoft Office ago, some changes were made to allow the Office
programs to run faster and more efficiently. Since several of them were normally installed
together as standard packages, the decision was to let them cooperate and “lend” features to each
other instead of trying to make each one utterly self-sufficient. In many cases, Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, and Outlook were the usual business computer bunch that got installed. And this
meant any other members of the Office suite could take advantage of the things they could do.
Since Excel is the champ at doing business-numbers-type charts, it’s happy to let other members
of the suite ask for its help in doing this. Hence the Visual Report feature. It allows Project to
pass data to Excel for use in a combination of PivotTable and PivotChart. There are many
different kinds of data arrangement one can use within Excel, and a dialog box lets us get basic
previews of all of them. We can even adjust the level of detail with some data sets, to use
different intervals of time—days, weeks, months, etc.
Though not many people know about it, another program can lend some horsepower to the
Visual Report: Microsoft® Visio®. This is a “structured graphics” program which can, among
other things, provide some charting capabilities from the Visual Report dialog. If you have Visio
on your system, you can certainly try a couple of the related choices in the dialog box later.

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Exercise 9-3:
Calling Up a Visual Report
1. We can get to the dialog box for the Visual Reports under the Report tab, but we
need to go to the Exports group on the right, which tells us something right off—we’re
sending data out of Project entirely.
2. When we click the button, the dialog comes up, and we can examine the layout.

3. At the top, we have the checkmarks to indicate which program we want to have catch
our data. In this example, we’ll just use Excel.

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4. Just below those are the tabs giving the categories of template into which the data
will be ported. We can click All, if needed, to see the entire collection at once. And from
these, we’ll select Baseline Work Report.
5. Near the bottom center, we can change the level of usage data to include in the
report. We’ll set it to Days, meaning to chart the data using that as a quantifier (display
the info on a per-day basis where possible).
6. We can then click View at the bottom, upon which the data will be passed to Excel.
Depending on the amount of information in the project file, i.e. number of tasks, resources, and
so on, the transmission of data to Excel can take as long as several minutes. It can also depend on
the speed of the computer, amount of memory, etc.
7. Once the data are received, Excel should open, and we should see a chart. In fact,
it’s a PivotChart. Which implies there’s a PivotTable in there somewhere too, and there
is. If we look at the bottom of the Excel window, we’ll see two worksheets have been
created here, and we can click on either one to see what’s going on.

8. As is often the case, if we want to change the structure of the chart, it’s a little easier
to go to the table and decide what we want in or out.

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9. We can look over to the PivotTable Fields panel at right, and scroll through the list of
checked items—the fields in the table. If there’s anything redundant, or not useful, we
simply uncheck it. For example, we saw a column called Actual Work in the chart. If for
whatever reason we decide it isn’t telling us anything important (it might, in the real
world, but this is just a demonstration), we can uncheck it, and the column will vanish
from the chart as well as the data being removed from the table.

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10. Although we can save the Excel file, for our purposes, it’s not necessary. We can
exit out of Excel without saving, and return to Project.
11. Once back in the window, we’ll usually have to close the Visual Reports window by
clicking the appropriate button at bottom right.
12. We can then save and close the Project file, maybe adding the word “Complete” if
we want to save the finished version.
(One point about the Excel end of things in this example: The Excel file is not linked to the
Project file. Therefore, if any updates to the data are done in Project, the file will need to be re-
exported to, and otherwise refreshed in, Excel to stay current. At the time of writing, the author
is not aware of any method of bypassing this issue.)

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Lesson 10: Additional Features 183

Lesson 10: Additional Features

In this lesson, you will be introduced to:
1 Importing Data from Excel
2 Using the Organizer
3 Creating a Project Template
4 Master Projects and Subprojects

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How do we import data, and why?
What is the Organizer?
What kinds of items can we use it for?
How do we create a template in Project?
What is a master project, and how do we use it?

The nature of the program means that in order to open a Project file, one has to have a copy of
Project. We’ve seen it is possible to export data from a file in a form which others can use. It’s
also possible to import data from programs like Excel into Project, because in many cases
someone has useful info to contribute, and all it needs is to be organized in a form Project can
read.
Another aspect of the program allows structures like reports and calendars to be copied from one
file to another, so they don’t have to be rebuilt time and again. Calendars, especially, can be
complex enough, with holidays, specific company hours, and other constraints, that trying to
remember all the things to mark off becomes difficult at best. But the Organizer lets the user pass
them easily between any two files.
It’s even possible to build an entire Project file to act as a blank form, with all the elements ready
and waiting like a furnished house. The idea of the template has existed in many programs for
some time, and Project is no exception. Being able to set up a document one can reuse as many
times as needed, if a number of similar projects are going to happen, can save a significant
percentage of work time for a project manager.
Once in a while—more frequently now than some years ago—several projects will run at the
same time, doing related things, as a sort of mega-project. If they all need to work as a team,
putting them under the umbrella of a master project and letting them link on critical items can
make for better situational awareness among the managers. This also allows the master project to
have a manager of its own, and thereby bring some oversight if needed to the whole bunch.

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Lesson 10: Additional Features 185

Topic A:
Importing Data from Excel

Despite Project’s proprietary nature, it is possible to move data in and out of a project file. In
fact, this has been the case for several versions, as it was understood that not everyone on a
project would have a copy of the program, yet it would be desirable, and often necessary, to be
able to import or export data. Other people besides the project manager often have useful info to
contribute, and the PM has to be able to pass important items to the staff, or the stakeholder(s).
Exporting, as we saw, is essentially a matter of picking the format you want to save to, and
specifying exactly what it is you want to have go out. The program assisted us with a wizard on
this. We can also select, copy, and paste if we want, especially if the information is going into
something with the row-and-column arrangement, such as an Excel worksheet or a Word table.
Importing is a tad pickier, but only because the two or three main import destinations need that
same row-and-column-ish layout of data at the source. But once it’s ready, another wizard can
help us along, and we mainly just have to read the instructions carefully. And importing to a new
project file works pretty much the same as appending to an existing one, so we don’t have to
learn more than one system of doing this.

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186 Lesson 10: Additional Features
Exercise 10-1:
Importing Data from an Excel File
1. Back in Lesson 5, we exported a chunk of data from our Project file to an Excel
workbook. If we wanted to import from, say, a co-manager’s version of this data into
Project so we could get a jump on data entry, it’s already in a form we can use. We
simply have to have the Import Wizard kick into gear, as the Export Wizard helped us
earlier. So, we start by going to the File tab, selecting New, and New from Excel
workbook.

2. We might need to navigate in the normal way to our Lesson 5 exercise files, and in
the Open dialog, at bottom right, switch file formats in the dropdown.

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Lesson 10: Additional Features 187
3. We should then see the Excel file we saved from Lesson 5, Typical Commercial
Construction L5 Complete, ready to use. So we’ll give it a double-click.
4. This should start the Import Wizard, which allows us to bring in the data with a
minimum of fuss. We’ll go ahead and click Next at the bottom, once we’ve read the
blurb.

5. Because we just happen to know this information is already laid out and labeled
correctly, we can select Use existing map from the buttons in this step, and click Next.

SIDE SORT-OF-TECH TIP:
Strictly speaking, with the field “map” we’re about to use, we’d need to either make sure
the field names match so Project knows where to insert the data (which is already done
here), or we’d have to manually select the data “slots” in Project based on what we would
know of the field names in the source file. Doing the former, while it takes a little more
work on the front end, is less work at the destination. But selecting the field name slots is
not post-doctoral-level work, just a little time-consuming.

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188 Lesson 10: Additional Features
6. The “map” we’ll choose here is Default task information, as we already saw the
information is tasks, set up just as Project likes them. (And click Next.)

7. For the Import Mode, since we closed our previous file, we’ll import this As a new
project. (The other choices would either add the data onto an existing project, or
merge—that is, overwrite information the two files had in common and otherwise
append.) Click Next again.
8. For Map Options, if we had exported Resources and Assignments as well as Tasks,
we could check all three in the first group here. But Tasks alone will do. The same with
Import includes headers, further down. (This is actually a big help, as the headers help
direct the field “traffic” into the proper parking spaces. The names matching up will do
the trick, you see.) Click Next to go on.
9. At this point, Task Mapping, the critical bit is at the top. Sometimes the names of the
sheets can be confusing. We may need to pause before doing the whole import thing
and make sure which sheet, by name, the information is on. For us, it’s the one called
Task_Export_Table. So we’ll need to select it from the dropdown at top.

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10. If any of the field names had not matched up, we’d go to each row, click just to the
right of the field name, and select which destination (field) each piece of info would go
to.

11. Once we reach the End of Map Definition, we’re asked if we want to save the map
we just worked with. We don’t need to here, as it’s already saved. So we can click
Finish.
12. Now, we see that if we were starting from scratch, we’d have a significant part of the
file already in place. We could do the same with the resources.
It would also be possible to simply open an Excel file, select and copy (Ctrl-C) either the tasks or
resources (not including labels/headers, as they wouldn’t be needed), jump back into Project, and
either on the left side of the Gantt or in the Resource Sheet, click the top left corner and simply
paste (Ctrl-V), just as if we were working in Excel from start to finish. (Bringing in data from a
table in Word works exactly the same way.)
13. We can close without saving; we already have the data for this in the file we’ll open
in the next topic.

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Topic B:
Using the Organizer

There are a few features in Project which aren’t widely known, more’s the pity. One, the
Progress Lines, which we saw earlier, allows a project manager to see at a glance whether any
tasks are significantly ahead of or behind schedule. Another is the ability to export or import data
fairly easily, saving some time both in entering data and making sure other people can read it
quickly.
The Organizer, though, in some ways, is one of the most powerful features of the program. It
allows even more complicated items than mere data to be efficiently moved from file to file. And
it even lets the user add them to the blank-file template—the one the program uses whenever we
want to start a blank project from scratch. Which means a blank file can be created with several
things built in we’d otherwise have to reconstruct again, and again….
What’s even more remarkable is the ease of use. Once we know where to get to the Organizer, or
even having put the button for it in the Quick Access Toolbar, the only thing the user has to
check is which two files are selected to send or receive. And any open files can do so, along with
the blank file template, called Global.mpt. (Most people don’t end up using the Organizer so
frequently as to want the button in the QAT, but it’s certainly no harder than putting anything
else there if desired.) And anything in the Global template is going to be there whenever we start
a new blank project.

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Exercise 10-2:
Using the Organizer
1. For this next exercise, we’ll open the file made ready for us. As usual, we can go to
File to Open, navigate as needed (to our Lesson 10 folder), and find the file called
Continuing Commercial Construction L10.

2. Once we have it open, we’ll want to get to the Organizer, which, because its most
frequent use is to move various views around, can be found in the View tab, under
either Task Views or Resource Views, in the Other Views dropdown. We can go to
either, click More Views, and get to the Organizer button on the right side of the box.

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3. With the Organizer open, we can see there’s a fairly simple organization in the box.
The tabs at top let us see what we’re going to move; the two lists in the middle are
what’s available in a category; the buttons in the middle manage the items. And at
bottom, two dropdown lists tell us which files are currently involved.
4. If we want to copy any item from one file to the other, the method is simple. Select
the category at top, then the item on either side, and click the Copy>> button in the
middle. The double arrow tells us which way the operation will go. (The Shift and Ctrl
keys work here for selecting adjacent and non-adjacent items.) So if we want to add the
24 Hours calendar to our file, we select Calendars at top, 24 Hours in the Global.MPT
file on the left, and Copy to the right.

5. Under the Reports tab, we might want to use the End of 2020 Status Report, or
something similar, for another project. So we can select the Reports tab, then the report
in question on the right, and click <<Copy to give it to the Global template.

6. We can then close the Organizer, and the More Views box. We can also save the file.
The most frequently used categories seem to be Views, Reports, and Calendars. This is probably
so because those are the kinds of things most users create and want to employ on a repeating
basis. Custom fields come into the picture a little less often, but once in a while, when someone
needs to have data in a file which the program doesn’t know about, they can be copied around as
well.

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Lesson 10: Additional Features 193

Topic C:
Creating a Project Template

In many businesses, projects rarely proceed in a vacuum. And many projects are part of a series,
or at least of a group of similar projects. A construction company, a shipbuilding firm, a road-
repair business, or even a dairy farm will do some things in a similar fashion each time, and
(hopefully) with the same staff, or the same team positions.
If all we have to do is the equivalent of filling in the blanks on a form, we can save at least a little
time. After all, having to recreate the form from the get-go, every single time, is monotonous at
best. And a template is the form, and we can take any project file, clear out the stuff which
changes each time we use it, and tell the program to treat it like a blank from which we can tear
off copy after copy.
Best of all, if something significant changes, we can easily modify a copy, save it under the same
name, or a new name, and again not have to redo the entire thing from the top.

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Exercise 10-3:
Saving a Project as a Template
1. If we want to save our construction-project file as a template, we should “clean out”
one or two things which would not have happened at the start of a project—which is, of
course, where a template would normally pick up. We’ll select the entire Gantt chart, by
clicking at the upper left of the left side, above the task ID numbers and to the left of the
Info column icon.

2. We can now set the percentage complete for all the tasks to zero, as nothing would
be done at the very beginning of the project. To do this, we go up to the Task tab, and in
the Schedule group, we click the 0% Complete button.

3. Task 80, Lay masonry at core, mechanical, and toilets, also needs a bit of work—we
split the task earlier, and such a thing is not certain to happen again next time. So we
slide down to the row in question, move the pointer over to the progress bar on the right
side of the Gantt, and drag the right half of the currently-split task back to the left to
rejoin it with the other half.

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Ideally, we should also correct over-allocations prior to saving as a template, since it’s preferable
not to overallocate resources right off the bat. We can use the Level All command, under the
Resource tab in the Level group, to do this, but then we may have to juggle the resulting splits in
a few tasks with more over-allocations. Getting stakeholders and/or senior management to allow
adding resources is obviously outside the scope of this manual, but it could be argued that there’s
a balance between spending more on resources and finishing the project on time, or early.
Instead, if possible, we can re-arrange tasks and resources such that splits are minimized.
Reassigning resources so they don’t have to be on more than one task at the same time, then
addressing splits, is a simple but usually effective solution.
4. Assuming we’ve dealt with the main things which needed cleanup, we can now tell
the program we want to save a copy of the file as a template. So we can go to the File
tab, and select Export. Once there, the item we’ll click is Project Template, under
Templates. Below that, we can click Save As.

5. In the Save As box, we can change the name to reflect this being a template—though
we do not have to use the word “template” in the name, if we don’t want to.
6. Note that the program doesn’t insist we put the file in a template folder; we can do
this later, if we wish. But we should usually glance at the Save as type dropdown, to
make sure it’s Project Template, just in case.

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7. After giving the template whatever name we will recognize later, we can make sure of
where it’s being put (the Lesson 10 folder will do), and click Save at bottom right.
8. Hmm, that’s new. We have another Save As Template dialog box. And this one is a
little deceptive. If we read the fine print, we see we’ll need to check what we want to
remove from the template, not keep. The good news is, we normally only need to check
the first and last items: Clearing the baselines is fine, as we usually want to record them
only once the project has started, and a new project may or may not need its tasks
published to the web app. (N.B.: Over the last several years, the author has asked
many students if their companies use the Project Web App. The consensus seems to
be, Not much. Hence the subject not being brought up herein.) So we’ll check the first
and last items, to wipe them clean, and click Save.

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9. We can close the file, and test the template. To do this, we can go back to the File
tab, click New, and select New from existing project. The main thing, once we navigate
to the right folder (Lesson 10, in this case), is to change the file type dropdown at the
bottom right to Project Templates. It is a different file type, and the dialog box can’t see
it till we do.

10. Double-clicking on the template will open a copy. We’ll know, because even if we
immediately do a File->Save, the dialog box will show the file type specifically as a
project, not a project template. (Also, sometimes, depending on how your copy of
Windows and of Project are set up, you may see the filename with the extension “.mpt”
on the end—Microsoft Project Template.)
11. And we’ll see things pretty much the way we left them—we could start another
project of the same sort with a good chunk of the work already done. We don’t need to
hang onto the copy we “tore off”. We can close it without saving.

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Topic D:
Master Projects and Subprojects

Many kinds of projects can consist of sections, or projects within projects. Making a movie,
launching a space probe, building an apartment or office building or set of buildings…all of
these can, and sometimes should, be divvied up to make managing the pieces easier. It’s been
pointed out that if one is moving from a house to an apartment, or vice versa, moving a large
number of small boxes is easier than a small number of large boxes. So organizing a project into
“bite-sized” pieces can make some aspects of project management easier. And if a longer
timeline is involved, this is almost certain to be so.
The process of creating subprojects and integrating them into a master project is quite simple.
One creates a blank project as a container, and inserts the subs into it. Save the master
“container” as a project itself, and you’re set. If one has important tasks in one subproject which
the senior PM knows depends on another, linking the two uses the same technique as if the two
were in the same subproject. And if any subproject is updated—as they can be, since they still
exist as separate projects—the master will “see” the update, and anything linked to the updated
sub will react if necessary.
So we get the best of both worlds: A project can still be handled in the normal way, by a PM and
their staff, yet be a part of a bigger project with its own senior PM, staff, and so on, allowing for
both coordination with the others and solo latitude.

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Lesson 10: Additional Features 199

Exercise 10-4:
Creating Subprojects and a Master Project

For this exercise, we’re going to start from scratch, and create a couple of generic projects
similar to the ones we’ve been working on. Then, we’ll create a master project, using a blank
project file as the container—a master project file is just a regular Project document with others
inserted in it.

1. Make sure to close any open files. Then, we’ll go to File->New, and find and click the
template for Commercial Construction. If we get the smaller window showing the
descriptive blurb, you can just click Create.

2. Once the file comes up in the Gantt Chart view, close the Timeline if you wish (View
tab, Split View group on the right—uncheck Timeline), and save the file under the name
Sub Commercial Construction L10 in the Lesson 10 folder.

3. We can close this first file for the moment.

4. We’ll want to go back to File->New, and find the template for Residential Construction
(you’ll probably need to scroll down a bit). Give it a click, and again, if we get the
description mini-window, click Create.

5. Same procedure here: Close the Timeline if you like, and save the file under the
name Sub Residential Construction L10, in the same folder as the other. And close
when you’ve got it.

(The names don’t actually need to have the word “Sub” in them. We’re doing it this way for
convenience. There are some conventions we follow in using this program, but they’re not
carved in stone.)

6. Having simulated the creation of our subprojects, and assuming whatever degree of
progress we’ve made (yes, we can make them part of a master at any point we like),
we’ll now create a blank project file by the same method as the others. Once more, File-
>New, and click the Blank Project item.

7. The process now becomes about as simple as falling off a log. We click (usually) the
first Task Name space, go to the Project tab on the Ribbon, and on the left end, in the
Insert group, we click Subproject.

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8. We navigate as needed to the folder containing our subprojects, and double-click
whichever one we want to insert first. (I’ll use the Commercial subproject.)

9. We then follow exactly the same procedure for the Residential subproject, having first
clicked the next task name space down.
10. The twister arrows to the left of each project name allow us to expand the subproject
to check out the tasks, and all necessary resources are automatically added (in our
case, since we’re using templates) to the Resource Sheet.

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