Format Menu

Format Menu changes with your current selection of view, this is useful when you want to format the default view or change the default look and feel of objects.

Example below

Format menu when Resource view is selected.

Format menu when Network Diagram view is selected.

It is not possible to check all formats but to give you the idea let’s review the Format menu for Gantt view.

Format menu for Gantt chart view is selected

Gantt Chart view is one of the most used view in Microsoft project, you may need to tweek the look and feel of tht gantt view before you use the gantt chart  in your status meeting presentation etc.

The first button on Format group is “Text Symbol” , the difference between this button and formating option on task menu is that , the changes made here are applicable to all the task as well as all the text displayed in Gantt view at the same time this is applicable to all the view.

Gridlines as the name suggest can be helpful to show hide Gridline on the Gantt chart. The other intersting option is “Progress Lines” this can quickly draw line that can show what is current progress.

You can show the weekly progress /monthly progress etc using the options avilable.

Layout button can be used to show how the link need to be displayed on gantt chart, the date format etc.

Column group is one that can help to customize the column format and other details, as I said earlier this settings are applicable to all the columns.

The next button Format in Bar style group can help you to customize the bar formats. The checkboxs avilable in Bar style are useful for quick analysis purpose. For example if you select criticle tasks checkbox it can quickly mark criticle task in red colure. The next checkbox Slack can help you to find the avilable slack in the task.

You can compare different baselines with each other using the basline dropdown button. Also you can compare the slippage using the slipeage dropdown.

Gannt chart style group can help you to draw your gantt chart in different colours.
Show/hide group can quickly show the summary task and can be used to outline numbers next to task.

Lastly , the Drawing dropdown have multiple options that can allow you to draw objects on Gantt chart directly. This is helpful if you want to highlight something or comment out something on gantt chart.

One import word of caution while using drawing objects that they are static drawings i.e. let say you draw circle around the gantt bar and then change the duration or dates  the circle will not change in size or location.