T3/ MS Project: Creating advanced layouts - Tutorial

In this MS Project tutorial, you will learn how to create advanced layouts:

• Milestones
• Summary tasks
• Overdue tasks
• From the current date line
• Task progress
• Highlighting the predecessor task chain

Improve your productivity and make your projects more readable and engaging with these advanced tips and techniques.

Milestones

To do this, click the View tab , and then on the Outline menu, select the task level you want to view. Let's move on to formatting the milestones. To do this, go to the format tab , select bar format. For milestones, choose the target shape and give it the color red.

Summary tasks

In the bar menu, remove the start and end shape and change the color of the middle bar to dark blue. In the text menu, add the "name" option inside the bar, then click OK . This will display the task name directly inside the summary task bar. You will notice that the text might exceed the bar. To fix this, we will change the text size. Go to text style , select "interior" , change to white color and choose size 8.

Overdue tasks

Go to Format , then strikethrough style and add a new strikethrough line . Enter the "normal" and "delay" conditions. Select the color red . Change the pattern to your preference, then click OK . Overdue tasks will be highlighted in red.

Today's date line

You also have the option to display today's date line in red on the Gantt chart. To do this, go to the Format Tab , then Gridlines . Select "Today's Date" , change the color to red, then click OK .

Task progress

To display completed tasks in green, select a task , then set its progress to 100% . Change the color to green and adjust the pattern to your preference.

Highlighting the predecessor task chain

Go to the Format tab , then click “task path” and select “predecessor” . The predecessor task chain will change color depending on the selected task.