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Sometimes you may want to mark major event in a project, for example indicate the beginning and end of the project or display the end of a major phase. You can use milestones to do that. To create a milestone follow the steps:

1. In Gantt Chart View, in the Task Name column, type the name of a milestone
2. In the Duration column type 0 and press ENTER

In the Gantt Chart the task will be displayed as a black diamond symbol ¿.

Want more tips? Click on Microsoft Project Tips and Tricks

So, you almost finished adding your tasks to your project plan and you are willing to display a project summary task. Here is a tip on how to do that.

1. From the Menu commands, select Tools and then Options
2. Click on the View tab and in the Oultine options for ‘Project x’ select Show project summary task check box to show the project summary task

The project summary task will appear before the task list in the Task Name column. If you want to change the name of the project summary task, select it and type the desired text.

Want more tips? Click on Microsoft Project Tips & Tricks

You’ve done a great job by creating a project plan in MS Project. You’ve sent the file to your client or colleagues via email and ops – they do not have a Microsoft Office Project installed on their computer and therefore cannot read the attached file. What should you do?

It would be so much easier if Microsoft Project 2007 had an option of saving a file in a PDF format as in the case with Word or Excel. But unfortunately it does not. So what are the alternatives on how to save and view the project files in a graphical manner?

You can save MS Project 2007 files as images. It will take a snapshot of a project plan in the form of a non-editable picture.

1. Open the Project file you want to take a picture of
2. From the Standard toolbar, click the Copy Picture button, or from the Report select Copy Picture
3. In Render Image decide on either For Screen (for the image to be used on screen), For Printer (for the image to be used on printed materials), or For GIF Image File (if you will be using a file on a web page)
4. In Copy choose either the selected rows or all the rows on screen to be included in the picture
5. In Timescale indicate the time frame within which you want the project to be copied.
6. Click on OK
7. Start the application where you want to insert the picture. Just some applications to use are Paint, Word, Visio, PowerPoint, an email, or even Excel
8. Insert the picture in the desired location

Now enjoy the sharing of the project schedule.

Want more tips? Click on Microsoft Project Tips & Tricks

Suppose you have a big project plan with lots of tasks. You would only like to display incomplete tasks in a Gantt view. What should you do?

‘Filter’ is the answer to this question. Filter specifies which task or resource information should be displayed or highlighted in a view.

Select one of the following:

• Select Incomplete Tasks from the drop down menu in Filter on the Formatting Toolbar  

• Or, from the Menu, select Project\Filtered For: All Tasks\Incomplete Tasks

Only Incomplete Tasks will be displayed. If Incomplete Tasks are still displayed then follow these steps:

1. Navigate to View\More Views.
2. From the dialog box, select Gantt Chart and click Edit.
3. Uncheck the Highlight filter and click OK.

This will ensure that only Incomplete Tasks are displayed.

Unlike Microsoft Excel, Project doesn’t have an unhide feature. When you hide a column in Microsoft Office Project, the column is only removed from view, not deleted from your plan. Also, hiding a column doesn’t remove any information from your plan.

To bring the column back again, you need to insert the column like you would with any new column. Any custom formatting that you applied to a previously hidden column will need to be re-applied to the inserted column.

1. In a sheet view, select the column to the right of where you want to show the column.
2. On the Insert menu, click Column.
3. Select the Field name you would like to display.

If you want to hide the name of a built-in table from the Table submenu in Microsoft Project without actually removing it from the project file, follow these steps:

1. On the View menu, click Table.
2. Under Table, in Table submenu, select More Tables and select the table you want to hide.
3. Click Edit and clear the Show in Menu option.

While tracking the project progress you can quickly update your project’s tasks by indicating the percentage of a task that is complete. It helps you to track actual progress.

By specifying a percentage of completion between 0 (for a task that has not started) and 100 (for a task that is finished), you can compare planned progress to actual progress.

You can quickly update the percent complete of specific tasks to 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% using a Tracking toolbar

1. On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.
2. Display the Tracking toolbar   by pointing to Toolbars from the View menu, and then clicking Tracking.
3. Hold CTRL and click each of the tasks in the list that you want to update. You can select up to 10 tasks at once. Or, if the tasks that you want to update are listed consecutively, you can click the first task, hold SHIFT, and then click the last task to select the all of them.
4. Click corresponding percent complete button, such as 100% Complete   on the Tracking toolbar.