About the Microsoft Project User Interface

Quick reference

• 00:04 Before we get started using Microsoft Project,
• 00:07 I'm going to walk you through the various aspects of the user interface.
• 00:12 There's essentially seven areas of the Microsoft Project user interface.
• 00:17 There is the Backstage and that's accessed through this file tab.
• 00:26 There's the Ribbon bar, The Timeline,
• 00:31 and you may or may not see the Timeline on all the views that you go to.
• 00:37 There's an area to view Views and Tables, and we'll talk about what those mean.
• 00:43 Then there's the Status Bar that shows you information about your project,
• 00:49 view shortcuts, and the zoom slider.
• 00:54 Our first area of focus is going to be on the Ribbon.
• 00:57 Now this is the Ribbon bar in terms of how Microsoft defines it.
• 01:03 I'm really going to refer to the Ribbon as being essentially this
• 01:08 entire upper portion of Microsoft Project.
• 01:12 And this is because all these user interface elements kind of work together.
• 01:16 Before I start talking about these various tabs, one of the things I would like
• 01:21 to point out is your screen and my screen might actually look different right now.
• 01:27 And that's important to talk about,
• 01:30 because the Ribbon is essentially what we call a responsive ribbon.
• 01:35 And what does responsive mean?
• 01:37 It means that it's going to respond differently to how large the screen is.
• 01:42 Maybe the resolution of your computer, or
• 01:45 maybe just how large you happen to have Project on your screen right now.
• 01:49 Let me show you what this means.
• 01:51 I'm going to click on the View tab.
• 01:54 And right now I can see all the icons here with their labels.
• 01:57 I'm going to ask you to focus your attention on these three icons here.
• 02:02 This is Task Views group, I'm going to highlight a few things.
• 02:07 There's an icon and then it says Network Diagram, an icon and
• 02:10 then it says Calendar, an icon and it says Other Views.
• 02:13 It's all spelled out for me.
• 02:15 Now I'm going to resize the screen for Microsoft Project.
• 02:19 Keep your eyes over there on that Network Diagram, Calendar, and Other Views.
• 02:25 I'm going to stretch the window down a bit here.
• 02:29 And as I do that, you can see these are no longer icons with the label next to them,
• 02:34 they're just icons.
• 02:35 Now I can mouse over and I can see them, I can see what they mean.
• 02:40 And so this is a Timeline, this is a Calendar,
• 02:43 because I'm getting this little pop-up.
• 02:45 However, it's not spelled out for me in either.
• 02:48 Now you can see over here there's a Sort, Outline, and
• 02:52 Tables under this data grouping.
• 02:54 I'm going to shrink Project a little bit more, keep an eye on that Sort,
• 02:59 Outline, and Tables.
• 03:00 And now you can see those are just icons without labels.
• 03:06 And this is what I mean by responsive.
• 03:09 The Ribbon is going to respond to how large the screen is and determine
• 03:14 what icons you see and how much detail you get when you stretch your window.

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