T3/ MS Project: Creating advanced layouts - Tutorial

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

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

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

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Milestones

To do this, click on the View tab , and then in the Outline menu, select the task level you want to display. Let's move on to formatting 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 menu bar, 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 and then click OK . This will display the task name directly inside the summary task bar. You will notice that the text might overflow the bar. To fix this, we will change the text size. Go to text style , select "inside" , change the color to white and choose size 8.

Overdue tasks

Go to format , then strikethrough style and add a new strikethrough line . Enter the conditions "normal" and "overdue". Select the color red . Change the pattern to your preference and 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 and 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 on "task path" and select "predecessor" . The predecessor task chain will change color depending on the selected task.