Chapter 11
Making Your Project Look Good
In This Chapter
Showing the critical path in Gantt Chart view
Changing the look of task bars
Giving your Gantt chart a new style
Formatting Network Diagram task boxes
Modifying the layout of a view
Changing the gridlines in a view
Adding graphics to your project
An old chestnut would have you believe that clothes make the man. Well, in the same spirit, sometimes the look of your schedule makes the project. Having a project that looks good serves two purposes. One, it impresses people with your professionalism (sometimes to the point where they’ll overlook a little cost overrun); second, it allows people looking at your project both on-screen and on hard copy to easily discern what the different boxes, bars, and lines indicate.
Project uses default formatting that’s pretty good in most cases. However, if you have certain company standards for reporting — say, representing baseline data in yellow and actual data in blue, or more frequent gridlines to help your nearsighted CEO read Project reports more easily — Project has you covered.
Whatever you need, Project provides tremendous flexibility in formatting various elements in your plan.
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
Microsoft has decided to capitulate to the artist in all of us by allowing you to modify shapes, colors, patterns, and other graphic elements in your Project plans. This gives you great flexibility in determining how your plan looks.
