Create a New Project

Quick reference

• 00:04 From here on in, we're going to work with a project that we create together.
• 00:09 Now before we get started,
• 00:11 it's important to make sure that you are in the same place as I am.
• 00:16 So if you have any projects open in Microsoft Project,
• 00:19 I recommend you close them now.
• 00:21 Save them, if you feel that you need to save them.
• 00:24 I would recommend that you exit Microsoft Project and start Microsoft Project anew,
• 00:30 so that you have this screen right here, which is the New backstage.
• 00:35 Go ahead and click on Blank Project,
• 00:39 and this will bring us to a brand new project.
• 00:43 Now if you have the options turned on just like we defined in the previous lesson,
• 00:48 then you should have tasks level zero displayed.
• 00:52 And you should see a New Tasks or
• 00:54 Auto Scheduled option at the bottom of the screen.
• 00:59 If you don't have these, then I suggest you go back to the previous lesson and
• 01:03 configure Microsoft Project before going any further.
• 01:07 One of the first things I like to do is give myself some more real estate to start
• 01:12 working on my project.
• 01:13 So the first thing I'm going to do is locate this splitter bar between
• 01:17 the Gantt chart table and the Gantt chart graphic.
• 01:21 So I'll go ahead and click my mouse and hold on to that and drag it to the right.
• 01:26 We can always bring that back later.
• 01:28 There, this gives us some more space to work with when we're creating our project.
• 01:34 So the first thing I'm going to do is stretch out this Task Name column.
• 01:37 So I find my mouse over here in the Task Name, and mouse to the right
• 01:42 until I get this bar here that allows me to resize the Task Name column.
• 01:48 So I'll go ahead and just stretch that out.
• 01:50 This shouldn't be too long, because you don't want your tasks to be too long.
• 01:55 But certainly before I only had about ten characters,
• 01:59 this gives me a little bit more space to do my text entry.
• 02:03 Now you'll also notice that there's a Start and Finish column and
• 02:07 these dates are cut off, so let's go ahead and stretch those out.
• 02:11 Now I can just come over here and mouse over and stretch the column as I need to.
• 02:17 But a faster option, and this is something you can do in Project and in Excel,
• 02:23 is just bring your mouse over here to this resize area and double click.
• 02:28 And it will resize to the text that's displayed on the screen.
• 02:33 Now speaking of this Start and Finish column,
• 02:37 we try to never enter text into Start and Finish.
• 02:40 We let Microsoft Project drive the dates by way of linking tasks with
• 02:45 the Predecessors column.
• 02:47 So we're going to add some tasks, add the duration, and then let the Predecessors
• 02:53 column drive the dates, so why not put Predecessors next to Duration?
• 02:58 So click on the Predecessors column so it's highlighted like this.
• 03:03 And then take the column heading and drag and drop that between Duration and Start.
• 03:10 So this is what our screen should look like now.
• 03:13 We should have a Task Name, Duration, Predecessors, Start,
• 03:17 Finish, Resource Names, and then the Gantt chart off to the right.
• 03:23 Now that we have the project looking the way we want,
• 03:26 we should turn our attention to the project information.
• 03:29 So to get to the project information, we'll click the Project tab.
• 03:33 We'll locate the Properties section, and then find the Project Information icon.
• 03:39 Go ahead and click the Project Information icon, and
• 03:43 here you can see we can set the start date for our project.
• 03:47 I'm going to set the start date for my project to be October 5th, 2015.
• 03:53 Notice there's a number of other options as well.
• 03:57 We can choose the Calendar, and we'll take a look at that in the next lesson,
• 04:02 and we can also set the Schedule From.
• 04:04 And Schedule From allows us to choose the Project Start Date or
• 04:09 the Project Finish Date.
• 04:11 So what does this mean?
• 04:13 Well, let's say for example that we were preparing for a large trade show event,
• 04:18 and we have to have everything open and ready by a certain date.
• 04:23 I can start my project by scheduling it from the finish date and
• 04:27 work my way backwards.
• 04:29 But generally speaking, you set the project start date, and
• 04:34 then you work your way forward in your planning.
• 04:37 So go ahead and make sure that you've set the start date however you would like to,
• 04:43 and set the Schedule From to Project Start Date.
• 04:46 Click the OK button.
• 04:48 Note how the start date has changed from the current date when we started
• 04:54 the blank project to now the new start date, which is in my case 10/5/2015.
• 05:01 So the next thing to do is save our project.
• 05:04 Now this project is going to create a brand new house, so
• 05:07 we're going to call this project my new house.
• 05:10 So click the File tab > Save As > Documents, and
• 05:15 change the file name to My New House and click the Save button.
• 05:22 Now you'll see the task name at task level zero change to My New House,
• 05:27 so this will always change to the file name that you save.
• 05:31 To wrap up, when we create a project we always make sure that our project options
• 05:36 are configured, so for example task level zero is displayed and
• 05:40 new tasks are auto scheduled.
• 05:42 We set the project information.
• 05:45 And then in the next lesson I'll talk about setting up calendars and
• 05:49 then creating a project schedule.

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