Project 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 2

The Best-Laid Plans

In This Chapter

Exploring the benefits of Project’s new interface

Finding your way around Project

Exploring Project views

Personalizing views for your needs

Homer (not Simpson — the other one) once said, “The evil plan is most harmful to the planner.” In the interest of helping you avoid the evils of bad planning, take a moment to get comfortable with various aspects of controlling Project and moving around in your Project plan.

The file that you create in Project is called a Project plan, or schedule. This plan is like a multidimensional chess game from Star Trek, with a plethora of data about various aspects of your project as well as graphical representations of that information.

To see that information, Project provides more views than the Grand Canyon. These views help you observe the structure of your plan and see the progress in your project. Project also offers many ways to move around and display different information in your views. Navigating Project and displaying (and modifying) its views are the topics covered in this chapter.

Project 2010’s New Interface

When Microsoft updated the navigation structure in the 2007 editions of the core Office apps like Word and Excel, it left Project stuck with drab old menus. With the 2010 version, Project finally gets the makeover it was waiting for. The following sections describe how to “work it” when you need to choose commands and work with files.

Using the Ribbon

The Ribbon dresses up the top of ...