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About this lesson
The ribbon contains all the actions (icons) you may need to perform within Microsoft Project.
Lesson versions
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2013, 2019/365.
Exercise files
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Using the Ribbon.mpp223 KB Using the Ribbon - Completed.mpp
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Quick reference
Using the Ribbon
The ribbon contains all the actions (icons) you may need to perform within Microsoft Project.
Steps
Here are some steps to get used to using the ribbon:
- Locate the icon to insert a new task into the project.
- Locate the checkbox to display the project summary task (or task zero).
- Familiarize yourself with the view tab and the view section in the task tab. Note how there is a Gantt Chart icon in the view and task tabs, but the more frequently used icons are in the task tab.
- 00:04 Let’s put what we just learned about the ribbon bar into practice.
- 00:08 So, start Microsoft Project, create a blank project,
- 00:15 And we should be able to get started.
- 00:18 Now, just to make sure that we are in the same place and
- 00:21 the same view, click the task tab.
- 00:25 Locate the Gantt chart icon.
- 00:28 Click the pick list for Gantt chart.
- 00:30 And just make sure Gantt chart is selected here.
- 00:33 This way we're in the same place.
- 00:36 Now, the first thing we're going to do is create a task.
- 00:40 I could just start typing a task over here, but
- 00:43 we want to learn more about using the ribbon bar.
- 00:46 So let's click the task tab, locate the insert section.
- 00:53 And click the pick list for task.
- 00:56 And you can see there are a number of different types of tasks that we can
- 00:59 insert into our project.
- 01:01 We're just going to choose task.
- 01:05 You can see here Microsoft Project automatically inserted a stub for
- 01:09 a task for us.
- 01:12 Now, I see this task, but where's the project.
- 01:15 Well, the project is up here.
- 01:16 It says I'm using project one.
- 01:19 However, I'd like the project to display here, in the Gantt chart area.
- 01:25 So to do that, we locate our contextual tab that's labeled
- 01:29 Gantt chart tools and click the format tab.
- 01:35 Now, in the format tab, there's all sorts of ways that we can change the look and
- 01:39 feel of this view.
- 01:41 What we're looking for is the project summary task.
- 01:46 So, locate the show hide section and
- 01:50 then locate the project summary task check box and go ahead and click that.
- 01:57 What you can see now is the project
- 02:00 name is now displayed with what's called task zero.
- 02:04 You can't do too much to task zero.
- 02:07 It's really just a heading for you.
- 02:10 But everything now that you create in your project, all the tasks that you add
- 02:15 will always display underneath this project summary task.
- 02:20 As we use Microsoft Project,
- 02:22 you will find there are certain tabs that you will use frequently.
- 02:26 One of those such tabs is the view tab.
- 02:29 Let's go ahead and click the view tab right now.
- 02:32 I'm not going to get into the details of using the view tab right now,
- 02:35 but what I do want to point out is a few things.
- 02:38 Note how there's groupings of icons for resource views and task views.
- 02:45 Now in the task view, right now we're looking at a Gannt chart view
- 02:48 which is very columnar and tabular right now.
- 02:51 So, we've got columns of fields and rows of information.
- 02:56 Well, if I want to see what this might look like as a calendar view,
- 02:59 I can click calendar.
- 03:01 And you can see now I've got this calendar style view.
- 03:05 I can click network diagram, and this is showing me a visual depiction of what
- 03:10 my project looks like in a network diagram and
- 03:14 we'll talk more about what that is used for in a future lesson.
- 03:18 For now, I want to also go back to the Gantt chart view.
- 03:22 So you notice the view tab has this Gantt chart icon, and
- 03:27 I can select Gantt chart here.
- 03:29 But remember, I also mentioned in the previous lesson
- 03:33 that if I click the task tab There is also a view option here.
- 03:38 Remember, the far left side of the Gantt Chart from View, to Clipboard,
- 03:44 and Font are things that you use very frequently in Microsoft Project.
- 03:49 So I can get to the Gantt Chart from the Task tab Of from the view tab.
- 03:54 So I'm gonna click the task tab and then choose Gannt chart.
- 03:59 And this brings me back to the Gannt chart.
- 04:03 That was a brief overview of using tabs and icons inside of Microsoft project.
- 04:08 In the next lesson I'm going to go over using the back stage, but
- 04:12 we are gonna use it one time here.
- 04:15 And that's just so that we can save our project.
- 04:18 So let's go ahead and click on the file tab,
- 04:21 and that will bring us to the back stage.
- 04:24 Next click save as.
- 04:25 And there's a number of places that we can save our project.
- 04:30 Right now, we're just going to save it to our computer,
- 04:32 we won't save it to the Cloud or to SharePoint.
- 04:36 Choose Desktop and then give the file a name.
- 04:41 I'm going to use the file name that is a number for this lesson.
- 04:53 Once you're happy with the file name go ahead and click the save button.
- 04:59 One thing I will point out is your project now changed.
- 05:02 With this project summary task displayed
- 05:05 you can see it no longer says project 1 on task level 0.
- 05:08 It's actually showing the file name for the project.
- 05:14 So in this lesson we covered using the tabs and
- 05:17 a few icons, and we saved our project.
- 05:20 In the next lesson as I mentioned I'm going to
- 05:23 cover a lot more detail of using the back stage.
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