Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Views represent how the current window looks in Microsoft Project. The table defines the column of information you want to see.
Lesson versions
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2013, 2019/365.
Exercise files
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Create Custom Views and Tables.mpp489.5 KB Create Custom Views and Tables - Completed.mpp
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Quick reference
Create Custom Views and Tables
Views represent how the current window looks in Microsoft Project. The table defines the column of information you want to see.
Steps
To create views and tables, follow these steps:
- Click the View tab, click the tables picklist, select more tables, and create a new task-based table.
- When the table is complete, click the View tab, click the other views icon, and then select the more views menu item. Click the view type, and then click the New… button.
- 00:04 Once you get started using Microsoft Project,
- 00:07 you're going to find that the views that come with the product aren't
- 00:11 necessarily set up the way you want.
- 00:15 For example, I'm looking at a view right now that's listing the fixed cost accrual.
- 00:19 I don't need that for my project so I wanna remove that.
- 00:24 But I can also create my own view.
- 00:27 Now the way we do that is to first create a table, and
- 00:31 that defines the columns that we're going to display.
- 00:34 Then we can create the view.
- 00:36 i'm going to show you how to do that in this lesson.
- 00:40 After holding a team status meeting, the home owner asked you, as the project
- 00:45 manager, to build a view that clearly shows the current status of the project.
- 00:51 You're going to create a view and a table.
- 00:55 Right now you're in the get chart view.
- 00:58 And you can see I'm in the view tab in project, looking at the get chart.
- 01:04 But if I come over here to the data section, I'm looking at the cost table.
- 01:08 And, the cost table is defining all of these columns.
- 01:12 So, I need to create a simplified table for the homeowner.
- 01:18 The first thing I'll do is click tables, more tables.
- 01:24 Make sure it's a task based table, and click the New button.
- 01:30 We're going to call this table homeowners table.
- 01:37 Now in the field name, we're going to type ID.
- 01:41 Now ID is this number here on the left of the screen.
- 01:45 The reason for why there isn't a title that says ID
- 01:49 is because this is a particular column that's locked in place.
- 01:54 And you can see it says lock first column.
- 01:56 We want that.
- 01:57 So no matter how much you scroll horizontally,
- 02:00 you'll always see this ID number.
- 02:03 So that's our first one.
- 02:05 We also want the indicators column.
- 02:07 If you'll recall there is an indicators column in some of our views that actually
- 02:12 show the red person that's showing over allocation the notes icon.
- 02:18 That show our notes for
- 02:19 the different types of predecessors successors that we created.
- 02:24 We want the task name.
- 02:26 And oddly enough, you don't type task name.
- 02:29 Notice there's no field for that.
- 02:30 You type name, N-A-M-E.
- 02:33 So, if you're creating a task level view, it's going to be name and
- 02:38 that's a task name.
- 02:39 If you create a resource level view, you type name and that's the resource name.
- 02:44 So a little bit odd there, but name means task name.
- 02:50 Now of course we want to be able to see the duration for our project.
- 02:56 And we also want to see the start and the finish.
- 03:03 The homeowner isn't too interested in who's doing the work,
- 03:06 because it will be pretty clear based on where we're at.
- 03:09 So the homeowner doesn't want that field.
- 03:12 Now, when you click the table menu, notice how we got to this More Tables.
- 03:18 Well, we want to be able to see it from the pick list.
- 03:22 So we choose Show In Menu.
- 03:25 And click the OK button.
- 03:29 Do not click Apply, instead click the Close button.
- 03:32 We're pressing the Close button because we don't want to just apply these
- 03:37 changes to this gantt chart view, we want to create our own view.
- 03:43 So click the close button.
- 03:45 Now we're going to create a view that uses the table that we created.
- 03:50 Make sure you click on the View tab.
- 03:53 Choose Other Views.
- 03:56 Choose More Views.
- 03:59 Click New.
- 04:01 Choose single view and
- 04:06 type Home Owner View.
- 04:11 The home owner wants a Gantt chart style view.
- 04:13 So we'll go ahead and leave that.
- 04:15 The table we'll use is the homeowners table.
- 04:19 The group we'll use is no group.
- 04:22 We're not going to group the tasks together in any special way.
- 04:26 And then the filter is going to be all tasks.
- 04:30 Now, if the home owner only wanted to see incomplete tasks or
- 04:34 late milestones, you could choose a filter.
- 04:38 But right now we're just going to choose All tasks.
- 04:41 And we'll choose Highlight Filter.
- 04:43 That means these little tick marks,
- 04:46 these little drop down arrows that appear next to each column can be filtered.
- 04:50 Se, we'll go ahead and choose Highlight Filter and click OK.
- 04:56 Now, we can click Apply to apply the home owner view.
- 05:01 As you can see, the home owner view does not look all that good right now.
- 05:06 So we could actually go into the table, modify the column, width,
- 05:11 and change all of the settings there.
- 05:13 But right now, any new changes we make,
- 05:15 will automatically affect the table that we created.
- 05:18 So now we can go ahead and move fields around, get them to look the way we want.
- 05:27 Now one thing that the homeowner did ask for is percent complete.
- 05:31 So we'll put that right to the left, to the left of the duration column.
- 05:35 So insert that and type percent complete.
- 05:40 Now, the homeowner also said
- 05:43 that they're not interested in just seeing all these numbers.
- 05:47 They want some sort of an indicator.
- 05:50 That tells them how well the project is progressing
- 05:53 against the timeline and the budget.
- 05:55 I'm going to show you how to do that in the next lesson.
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