1. Customizing the Gantt Chart View
The Gantt chart became a standard way of visualizing project
plans when, in the early 20th century, American engineer Henry Gantt
developed a bar chart showing the use of resources over time. For many
people, a Gantt chart is synonymous with a project plan. In Project,
the default view is the Gantt Chart view. You are likely to spend a
lot of your time in this view when working in Project.
The Gantt Chart view consists of two parts: a table on the left
and a bar chart on the right. The bar chart includes a timescale band
across the top that denotes units of time. The bars on the chart
graphically represent the tasks in the table in terms of start and
finish dates, duration, and status (for example, whether work on the
task has started or not). Other elements on the chart, such as link
lines, represent relationships between tasks. The Gantt chart is a
popular and widely understood representation of project information
throughout the project management world.
Tip
By default, Project displays a split view named Gantt with
Timeline when you start the program. However, you can change this
setting to display any view you want at startup. On the File tab,
click Options. In the Project Options dialog box, click General. In
the Default View box, click the view you want. The next time you
start Project and create a new project plan, the view you have
chosen will appear.
The default formatting applied to the Gantt Chart view works
well for onscreen viewing, sharing with other programs, and printing.
However, you can change the formatting of almost any element on the
Gantt chart.
There are three distinct ways to format Gantt bars:
-
Quickly apply predefined color combinations from the Gantt
Chart Style group, which you can see on the Format tab when a
Gantt Chart is displayed. -
Apply highly customized formatting to Gantt bars in
the Bar Styles dialog box, which you can open by clicking the
Format tab when a Gantt chart is displayed, then, in the Bar
Styles group, click Format, Bar Styles. In this case, the
formatting changes you make to a particular type of Gantt bar (a
summary task, for example) apply to all such Gantt bars in the
Gantt chart. -
Format individual Gantt bars directly. The direct formatting
changes that you make have no effect on other bars in the Gantt
chart. You can double-click a Gantt bar to view its formatting
options, or, on the Format tab in the Bar Styles group, click
Format, Bar.
In this exercise, you change the formatting of the Gantt chart
view.
-
On the File tab, click
Save As.
Project displays the Save As dialog box. -
In the File name box,
type Simple Formatting, and
then click Save.
To begin, you will display the project summary task to see
the top-level or rolled-up details of the project. Project
automatically generates the project summary task but doesn’t
display it by default. -
On the Format tab, in the
Show/Hide group, click
Project Summary
Task.
Project displays the project summary task at the top of the
Gantt Chart view.
The project summary task, which is always numbered
as task 0, contains top-level information such as duration, work,
and costs for the entire project. The name of the project summary
task comes from the title entered in the plan’s advanced
properties in the Backstage view, or if that is blank, Project
uses the file name as the project summary task’s name.
Next, you will adjust the colors of the Gantt bars and
milestones in the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view. You’ll
begin by viewing the Gantt bar for a manual task so you can see
how it is affected by the Gantt bar formatting. -
In the Task Name column,
click the name of task 9, Prepare book P&L
statement.
-
On the Task tab, in the
Editing group, click Scroll to Task.
Tip
You can accomplish the same thing by right-clicking the
task name and in the shortcut menu that appears, clicking Scroll
To Task.
Project scrolls the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view to
display the Gantt bar for a manually scheduled task that was
previously added to the book launch plan.
Keep an eye on this Gantt bar as we apply a different Gantt
Chart style to the project plan. -
On the Format tab, in the
Gantt Chart Style group, click
More to display the predefined
color styles.
The Gantt Chart styles are divided into two groups: -
Under Presentation
Styles, click the orange color scheme.
Project applies this style to the Gantt bars in the project
plan.
The Gantt bar of task 9, the manually scheduled
task, is no longer visually distinct from the automatically
scheduled tasks.
Applying a presentation style to the Gantt Chart view is an
option that you can use when you don’t want to distinguish between
manual and automatically scheduled tasks—when showing the Gantt
chart to an audience for whom you do not want to make this
distinction, for example.
Your next step in this exercise is to reformat a task name
so it will visually stand out. -
In the Task Name column,
right-click the name of task 6, Planning
Complete!
This is a milestone task that describes the end of the first
phase of the new book launch at Lucerne Publishing. You’d like to
highlight this task name.
In addition to the regular shortcut menu, note the
mini-toolbar. -
On the mini-toolbar, click the arrow next to the Background Color button, and under
Standard Colors, click
yellow.
Tip
You can also click the Task tab, and in the Font
group, click Background Color.
Project applies the yellow background color to the task
name’s cell. -
Right-click the task name again, and on the mini-toolbar,
click the Italic button.
Now the milestone name stands out. You can also format the
milestone indicator in the chart. You’ll do this next. -
On the Format tab, in the
Bar Styles group, click
Format and then click Bar.
-
In the Format Bar dialog
box, under Start, click the
Shape drop-down list.
Project displays the symbols you can use as a Gantt bar
edge, or, in this case for a milestone, as a milestone
symbol.
-
Click the star symbol, and then click OK.
Project uses the star symbol as the milestone symbol for
this task.
Tip
In this exercise, you used the Bar command to format a
single Gantt bar. You can also customize entire categories of
Gantt bars, such as all milestones, via the Bar Styles command.
To conclude this exercise, you will add horizontal gridlines
to the chart portion of the Gantt Chart view so you can more
easily associate Gantt bars with their tasks. -
On the Format
tab, in the Format group, click
Gridlines, and then click
Gridlines.
-
Under Lines to change,
leave Gantt Rows selected, and in the Type box under Normal, select the small dashed line (the
third option down), and then click OK.
Project draws dashed lines across the chart portion of the
Gantt Chart view.
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