Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Chapter 21. Viewing What You Want

Just as the tie-dyed T-shirts you wore in school no longer work in a buttoned-down office, what works for one organization may not be right for another. Even if you stay at the same job or on the same project, what you need to see in Project may change as you go along.

Fortunately, Project gives you lots of control over what you view in its window. You can customize or create views to present the right project information in the right way. For example, you can set up Gantt Chart task bars to emphasize the critical path, progress, or at-risk tasks. Most views include a table of information, and these tables are customizable as well. You can add, remove, or rearrange columns and tweak tables in other ways. Of course, text is omnipresent, and its formatting is at your command—whether you want to accommodate the reading-glasses crowd or to make key information stand out. Project can apply formatting to text that falls into a specific category, like critical tasks, or to individual elements like a crucial task bar.

You can also modify or create filters and groups to show particular types of information. By filtering tasks and resources, you can display only what meets the conditions you set, such as tasks with duration longer than two months. Alternatively, you can use groups to shuffle information into categories. Because groups can roll up the values of the items within them, it’s easy to see how much you’re spending on a particular group of contractors, ...