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.

View Menu

View Menu toolbar

As the name suggest this menu contains all the relevant option that can help you to view your project the way you are interested to view it.

Task View group and Resource view group contains different views that can be used to quickly access different kind of views.

Data View group contains all the tools that you can use to analyze your project; it can quickly help you to find exact specific details you are looking for.

You can highlight the data or you can even group the data in different views altogether.

Zoom group is useful to zoom in or out your project in Gantt chart it can even help you to analyze complete project on one click of the button “Entire Project”. The dropdown Timescale can help to view project in “days”, “Weeks” or in months etc.

With Split view group , you can manage multiple views side by side to each other. You can quickly change the different views with available dropdowns.

Finally if you have more than one project open you can use the window group to switch between them easily.

The “arrange all” can quickly arrange the open project horizontally so you can view and compare them easily.

Project Menu

Ideally this is the first menu you should visit while working on any new project.

Project Menu toolbar

If you are working on program or big project which has many small projects and you want to have dependency with each other you can use the Subproject button, we will see this in much detailed way in our upcoming sessions.

The “Project Information” as name suggested will help to setup and view the project basic information like the project start/end date, if the project scheduled from Start date or from End date, the current Status date and most importantly the calendar used by Project.

Project Information dialog

The Statics button on the Project information dialog box can quickly show the project statics assuming the baseline is set up for the project.

The WBS button can help us to define the WBS coding if you are tracking them separately.
“Change Working Time” is used to setup the calendar leaves, work exceptions etc.

Schedule group is useful when we create our baseline and set for monitoring and controlling the project.

The Status group can quickly help us to update status of project to specific date assuming everything is working as our plan till that date.

Lastly the import group “Reporting” can help us to view different reports.

The Proofing group contains the spell checker which is can be used to avoid any spelling mistakes you have done while entering the task details manually.

Resource Menu

Resource Menu toolbar

As the name suggest the toolbar is more useful with the Resource related views. As we seen earlier the view group can help to quickly switch between different views.

“Assignment group” useful when we start assigning resources to respective task. The Resource pool is quite interesting tool which will be useful when you are working with multiple projects and the resources are shared between the different projects.

Share Resources 

We will see this in more details when we try to see managing multiple projects/program in latter sessions.

Add resource can help you to add resources of respective types, it creates entry in resource sheet when you click on any one of the type of resource (“Work”, “Material” or “Cost”).

Add Resources

You can import resource from your companies Active Directory or from Address Book. This is useful if you don’t want to maintain the details separately.

In Microsoft Project Professional 2010, you can add resources to the list of enterprise resources that are contained within Project Server using last option “Import Resources to Enterprise” this will be only available if you are working with Project Server.

The property group, as the name on buttons shown can be used to see or edit more details of resources.

We will work with resources in detailed way in future when we work on scenario.

The last group is leveling, this is useful when we over allocate any resource and we want Project to take care of resource time adjustment.

Task Menu

Task Menu toolbar

The view button can be used to change quickly different view.

Clipboard group contains common formatting of task, you can change font, size of the task.
Schedule group and tasks group used for manipulation of task we will see in details in future sessions.
Insert group can be used task, recurring task, Summary and Milestones.  You can even import task from outlook into project.
The Deliverable option is used with Microsoft Server and SharePoint.

Properties group used to access more details of task.
The new feature is Timeline view, the “Add to Timeline” can quickly add task, summary task to Timeline view. The button is only visible when you have task name, duration start and end date available.

Editing task is most important and useful group.

“Scroll to” Task is very useful button when you have lot of task and want to view the specific task into the Gantt chart.
Example below, the task “Some Task” is not visible on Gantt chart.

On clicking “Scroll to Task”

The Find button can be used to find task quickly also it can be used to replace task.

The clear button can be used to clear the hyperlink, notes, formatting from task.

Fill button can be used to copy the task details quickly this comes handy as  Microsoft Project doesn't let you paste a value into a range of cells like Excel, thus instead of manually typing in durations or pasting one at a time, there is a "Fill Down" menu option. Select the cell that contains the value you want, select the range and select "Fill Down." This will copy all selected cell values in other selected cells.