Project 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 16

Spreading the News: Reporting

In This Chapter

Generating standard reports

Creating custom reports

Dazzling people with Visual Reports

Using graphics and formatting in reports

Making printer settings

Sharing a snapshot of the Timeline

Using enhanced copy and paste

Here it is. The big payoff. The reward you get for inputting all those task names, entering all those resource hourly rates, and tracking activity on dozens of tasks during those late-hour sessions in the first hectic weeks of your project. You finally get to print a report or other data, getting something tangible out of Project that you can hand out at meetings and use to impress your boss.

Reports help you communicate about your project, conveying information about the schedule, resource assignments, how costs are accumulating, and what activities are in progress or coming up soon. You can take advantage of built-in reports or customize those reports to include the data that’s most relevant to you. Project 2010 includes Visual Reports, which offers graphic possibilities to help paint a picture of your progress. Other features, such as the ability to customize and copy Timeline view and other features in the project, enable you to incorporate Project data in reports in other programs.

Knowing that you’ll want to impress people, Project also makes it possible to apply certain formatting settings to reports and to add drawings to help get your point across.

Off the Rack: Standard Reports

Standard reports are ...