How To Customise The Gantt Chart View In Microsoft Project 2003 And 2007

Once you've got to know Microsoft Project with its various views, tables and reports you may want to customise some of these. In Microsoft Project you can customise all of these but in this article we'll concentrate on customising the Gantt Chart view. Before long you'll be able to create your own customised versions with changed task colours and/or patterns, and added additional lines and data to show extra information.

Because the various Project views and tables can all be customised, it's good practise to create a copy of the original first and then amend the copy - that way you can always return to the original without having to worry about what you've changed.

To copy the Gantt chart view, in the upper menu bar choose View, More Views and ensure the Gantt Chart view is selected. Then click Copy and give the view a name, such as Gantt Chart2 and click OK to apply. You'll see the new view in the left hand view bar. Select this and you'll see the view is exactly the same as the original, which you can now amend. And when the file is saved, both views are saved. From now on is this article we'll work in the Gantt Chart view.

If you create a new project or open an existing one showing for example a project summary task, project tasks, summary tasks and milestones, all linked appropriately, you'll see the traditional Gantt chart view on the right, with blue tasks and black summary tasks. From the formatting toolbar you can use the Gantt Chart wizard to apply red formatting to critical tasks. The Gantt Chart wizard can apply other formatting as well, for example to baseline tasks (assuming you've set a baseline of course).

However if you do use the Gantt chart wizard you can only format one set of tasks at a time and any previous task formatting via the wizard will be removed. The tasks will remain but not the extra formatting. However if you have more than one Gantt Chart view you could apply different wizard formatting in each view.

To customise more features in the Gantt chart view you need to right click anywhere in the Gantt chart background. You'll see a sub menu listing what you can customise. The options are: Gridlines, Bar Styles, Layout, Nonworking Time and Progress Lines. We'll look at each of these next.

Choosing Gridlines lets you add additional lines on the chart, for example vertical lines to show the current date, project start date or project end date, and you can also change line colours and styles in the left hand table. Just about every line in the display on the right or in the table on the left can be customised.

Selecting Bar styles lets you change the colour and fill patterns for the different kinds of tasks displayed on the chart. This can be useful if you need emphasise different task types, and applying different patterns to tasks can be particularly useful if you need to print your chart on a black and white printer.

In addition the Bar styles can let you add data to the displayed tasks. For example to show percentage completion to the right of the Project Summary task right click in the right hand area, choose Bar Styles and then select Project Summary in the Bar Styles panel. You can change the colour of pattern in the lower part of the panel. To add data to the task, choose the Text tab and click in the white area to the right of "Right". In the pop down choose "Completed" then click OK to complete. Now your Project Summary Task with show percentage completed to the right of the task.

Choosing the Layout option lets you change how task links are displayed, and also lets you choose the format of progress dates shown next to tasks.

The Nonworking Time option lets you edit the colour and pattern showing non-working times such as weekends and holidays. You can also set non working times to display in front of or behind tasks, or not show at all. This is a very useful for projects with tasks which need to occur during non working times.

The Progress Lines feature is a great addition if you are currently tracking a project. You can apply a vertical red progress line based on any date you choose. A red vertical line will show on the Gantt chart based on the chosen date. The line will then zig zag down the project tasks showing each task's progress date. This will either be task start date for tasks not yet started, progress dates for tasks partially completed or completion dates for completed tasks.

Hopefully this article will have given you a glimpse into how to customise one of the key views in Project. Customising the Gantt chart view is just the start of customising Project's many features. To learn more about this why not think about attending a Project training course and explore these and other topics in much more detail. That way you can fast track your learning with Microsoft Project.