Microsoft® Project 2007 Bible

Chapter 24. Customizing Microsoft Project Using VBA and Active Scripting

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Filtering to see critical tasks and resource assignments

• Adjusting work using code

• Customizing the Project Guide

As you saw in Chapter 23, a macro is an automated set of instructions that can help you accomplish a specific task in Project. Macros are especially useful for completing tedious, repetitive tasks. You can record a macro in Project, or you can produce even more powerful automation by writing your own Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA, code.

For example, suppose that you need to increase the work for every task in your project that is assigned to a new, less-experienced resource. If you had to accomplish this manually, you could edit every task to which this resource is assigned in your project and modify the assignment's work field. If this were a large project with several hundred tasks, you see how this could take you hours to accomplish. It is easier to write some VBA code and then take just a few seconds to run the code. Furthermore, after you write your code, you can reuse it as many times as you like. If this idea appeals to you, customizing Project using VBA code is definitely worth exploring.

In this chapter, you find the following three case studies, which show the benefits of customizing Project 2007 using code:

• Writing VBA code to filter all tasks on the project's critical path that should have finished by the current date, but have not.

• Increasing the work value for a particular ...