Microsoft Project 2010

How to Create Custom Fields in Microsoft Project

MS Project has a LARGE number of fields set up by default, for almost anything the program can track. But even with all the feedback the design team gets, they can’t anticipate everything a user might need to monitor during a project. So the team …

Microsoft Project Keyboard Shortcuts

SkillForge SkillSheet Microsoft Project 2010/13/16 Keyboard Shortcuts Click here to download the PDF version. Navigate Views and Windows In order to… Press Activate the Control menu ALT+SPACEBAR Activate the entry bar to edit text in a field F2 Activate the menu bar F10 or ALT …

The Resource Usage View in Project

When planning a project, one of the problems we run into fairly commonly is overallocation of resources. It’s not impossible to fix, but it sometimes helps to know exactly where the overallocation is. The Resource Usage view is one place we can see it fairly …

Auto vs Manual Scheduling in Project

One small but important feature in MS Project is the Auto versus Manual Scheduling popup. It’s in the Status Bar at bottom. Here’s how it works: Manual Scheduling allows the user to control start date, finish date, and therefore, duration. And the program will not …

Using Effort Driven in Project

Microsoft Project is fairly easy to use at the basic level–entering tasks and resources, assigning one to the other, scheduling. But there are a few parts of the program that can take a little practice to use comfortably. One of these is the checkmark in …

Microsoft Project: Formatting a Gantt Chart for Summary Task

Recently a student posed a question during a Microsoft Project class. How does one format the bars of a Gantt chart to look the same for each unique summary task? Something that may look like this. It begins with creating a custom flag field for …

Changing Microsoft Projects Default Task Duration

In a recent Microsoft Project class a question arose concerning the default task duration, which is set in days. This student had recently been working on a deployment project and the default duration was too broad. It needed to focus on a smaller time-frame and …

How to Round Task Durations in Microsoft Project

How To Round Task Durations in Microsoft ProjectWatch this video on YouTube In this tutorial, you’ll see how to round the duration of a task in Microsoft Project by using a custom field. You’ll also see how to use this custom field in all of …

Dependency Types in Microsoft Project

When creating schedules in Microsoft Project the first thing that a Project Manager would typically do is to input the tasks involved in a project. These tasks then need to be linked to show the relationship between them. These links create task dependencies.

There are 4 different types of task dependency:

Finish-to-Start (FS): The finish date of one task drives the start date of another.
Start-to-Start (SS): The start date of one task drives the start date of another.
Finish-to-Finish (FF): The finish date of one task drives the finish date of another.
Start-to-Finish (SF): The start date of one task drives the finish date of another.

Missing Resources when Using Microsoft Project Resource Pools

If you work with Microsoft Project and have ever leveraged the power of Resource Pools across multiple projects, you may have encountered a strange behavior when assigning those resources.

When you share resources between a Resource Pool file (a dummy project file that typically has no tasks but is merely a container for holding resources) and another project file, sometimes the resources don’t show up when it comes time to make the resource assignments.