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CUSTOM VIEWS IN MICROSOFT PROJECT

Part one of a two-part series of blogs

If you find that you have to continuously rearrange the preset views every time you create a new file in Microsoft Project, why not try creating your own custom view? This blog explains how to do exactly that!

Custom Views in Microsoft Project (this article)
Creating Custom Views

This blog is part of a complete guide to customising Microsoft Project.

Posted by Andrew Gould on 13 January 2012 | no comments

Custom Views in Microsoft Project

In Microsoft Project a view is a particular combination of a table, a chart and perhaps a form. There are lots of preset views available, such as the Gantt Chart, the Resource Graph and the Tracking Gantt. You can alter any of these views by displaying different tables, charts or forms. If you find that you've created a particularly useful combination you can save it as a custom view and reuse it in future projects.

Existing Views in Project

There are several ways to switch between the existing views in Project.

Using the View Bar you can simply click on an icon to switch to different views.

The View Bar sits at the left of the screen. Click on an icon to see different views.

The View Bar doesn't appear by default, so you might need to choose to display it.

If you can't see the View Bar, right-click in the thin vertical strip at the left of the screen and click the View Bar option.

In Project 2003 and 2007 you can use the View menu to switch between views.

There is a short list of commonly used views and an option to see a full list of views by clicking More Views...

In Project 2010 you can use the Task, Resource or View tabs of the Ribbon to change views.

The View tool is the first option on the Task, Resource and View tabs of the Ribbon.

Seeing a Full List of Views

All of the options for changing views shown above include an option to see More Views. Choosing this option allows you to see the More Views dialog box containing a full list of the views available in Project.

To switch to a different view, select it and then click Apply.

Types of Custom Views

There are two types of custom view that you can create:

Single views allow you to create a view containing a single table along with a single chart or form.
Combination views allow you to combine two Single views together.

The next part of this blog series describes how to create each of these types of view.