From the course: Microsoft Project Step by Step: Planning for Successful Project Management

Explore the Project user interface - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Microsoft Project Step by Step: Planning for Successful Project Management

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Explore the Project user interface

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In many of the files I will be showing you, you will see information about our fictitious company, Lucerne Publishing, and the plan examples will show projects related to children's books. I will provide other examples where relevant, but you have access to these downloadable companion files to explore on your own. Learning about the project interface is an essential skill in finding features and will help you take advantage of software shortcuts. Remember the first time you sat in a car in the driver's seat and how you might not have known how everything worked, but now you're familiar with everything and can adjust car settings quickly. Mastering the project interface is a critical first step in driving a project plan. Let's take a look around in the top left. This is your Quick Access Toolbar. Any shortcuts that you want always visible belong there and one Microsoft gave you is Undo, which I use frequently. You also have the Ribbon and various categories. Here's a nice tip for you. If you double click a Ribbon tab, you can set up the Ribbon to auto hide. Now, this doesn't mean the features are gone. You can still click on that Ribbon and expand it temporarily, but it could give you more space on your screen when needed. To get out of that double click again. I should point out this is something people do accidentally all the time. On every Ribbon tab, there are groups of buttons or commands. This is the group name which you might hear me refer to, such as font or schedule. I'll be calling these buttons or commands and if you hover on them, there's a nice description for you. Other things that you'll see to pay attention to, the view currently displayed is shown in sideways words on the left. You can adjust this a different way. I love the right click shortcut. You may prefer the view bar, which shows a little icons instead. So that's a personal choice. And I'll right click and switch that back. Those options are also available in this Gantt chart list, which we'll be using later on as well. I should point out you have a status bar at the very bottom. Notice the word ready, some other options about your task type. And there are shortcuts over here that we'll be using. Feel free to change views here. And there's even a zoom control, which we will be using as well. I've just switched us to Gantt chart view, which is the most popular view, and it's credited to the visual modeling technique developed by Henry Gantt. A lot of people refer to this right side as the time scale side and the left side as the sheet or table side. We'll be exploring lots of views so you can learn the benefits of them. Now, Project provides shortcuts throughout their program to help you. There are screen tips, shortcut menus, usually at least three ways to do every command, maybe even five ways. And I want to show you some of the ones you'll be using. I already mentioned a right click shortcut. I would encourage you to right click just about anywhere and you'll find a shortcut. I also would encourage you to double click nearly anywhere for a shortcut. Feel free to practice that, and hovering or pausing on something often gives you another command or another feature. Should you ever need help in Microsoft Project, here's a place you can go. For me, it looks like a little magnifier. Some of you might have a different version with a question mark, but you can actually type something that you need help on and it will either direct you to the feature or it will direct you to a description about that item. Being able to name and define critical interface elements will help you use features throughout Project Online Desktop Client and it will help you expand your skills when creating project plans.

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