Project 2010 Bible

Chapter 8. Modifying the Appearance of Your Project

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Changing Project's looks

• Using the Gantt Chart Wizard

• Formatting elements one by one

• Inserting drawings and objects

After you enter the information for your project, you may want to take the time to format the individual elements of the schedule. After all, you may be working with this project for months or even years. Why not get it to look just right?

Project has dozens of ways to format the appearance of elements, from text to task bars, link lines, and network diagram nodes. Some of these changes are practical;others simply provide shapes or styles that may be more pleasing to you. You can use color and insert drawings or pictures into your schedule to make a visual point. You can also copy pictures of your Project file into other Office documents — for example, to include in a report. So get ready: This chap ter is where you can get visually creative!

Changing Project's Looks

Beyond the obvious motivation of making the lines and colors in your schedule more appealing, you may have a practical reason for modifying a schedule's appearance. You may, for example, want to do any of the following to make information about your project more accessible:

• Display information, such as the start and end dates or resources assigned to the task, in text form alongside task bars. This technique is especially useful for longer schedules in which a task bar may appear on the printed page far to the right of the task information in the ...