Category: Microsoft Project

The core content of the TPC blog, Microsoft Project related articles. I started this blog way back in 2014 with a series of articles to spot incorrect use of Microsoft Project. It took storm and I continued to write about the tool that Microsoft created for Project tracking and scheduling. The posts that you will find in this category are all linked to usage of the desktop application. Examples are the Backwards scheduling vs deadlines post and Never delete a task.

But there is much more content, please explore and I hope you find the content that you are looking for. If not, you can always reach out by adding a comment on a post.

About Percent Complete in Microsoft Project

Hello readers,

In this post I will take an extensive look at a set of fields that report progress in the schedule. I will have a close look at the Percentage complete entities within Microsoft Project There are % complete, % work complete fields and then there is also something called Physical % complete. In the field I get asked about the differences between the 3 fields on a regular basis. This post will help clear up some of the confusion, I hope.

March 2016 update ——————
Raphael Santos, Consultant at Sensei Project Solutions, is kind enough to provide a translated version of this post in Portuguese. Here is the link: http://www.raphael-santos.net/2016/03/campos-de-percentual-concluido-do-Microsoft-Project.html.

@Raphael; thanks man!
———————————————

Continue reading About Percent Complete in Microsoft Project

The Office templates within Microsoft Project

Hi there readers,

First of all, let me thank all of you. I just reached 11K views since I started this blog in Q3 2013. Amazing, thank you all for reading the blog.

This post has been on my mind for quite some time now, ever since I wrote the 80-20 blogpost. Microsoft offers a number of standard templates trough their service Office.com that can be reached via the application. There are templates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and even Microsoft Project. Great! But, have you ever taken a look at what is there? Me neither, so let’s take a look together.

— Supplements —

Erik here, I took a close look at all the comments and decided to upload the 5 templates I discussed in this article to the Project Corner OneDrive. There seems to be an issue with the office.com templates where some people are unable to access them. I also found out that people were searching for MS Project Budget templates, so I created a post about this.

Please feel free to download any of the files that are on The Project Corner OneDrive. Hope you enjoy the rest of the post.

—end of supplements—

Continue reading The Office templates within Microsoft Project

The 80-20 for Microsoft Project

During the two weeks I was taking care of little Wendy I also started reading The Four Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. And apart from being an excellent guide to rapid fat-loss and perfecting sleep, there is one real interesting concept that got stuck in my mind: The Pareto or 80-20 principle. Tim is a great source for finding the 20% that produces 80% of the desired results. Now, let’s find out that 20% for Microsoft Project use!

Continue reading The 80-20 for Microsoft Project

Building a scope creep view

Dominic Moss commented on the about baselines post with a nice suggestion. He talks about creating a view that shows a bar that gives the difference between actual finish dates and the proposed finish date captured in baseline(n). I told him that I would consider building this view and posting it on my blog. Today is that day Dominic, and I hope you like what I have done with your suggestion. Let’s build this:

Continue reading Building a scope creep view

Building a custom UI for Microsoft Project 2013 ribbon

Hi Readers,

For a while now we got this great new menu structure called the ribbon. It was introduced to Office back in 2007 and Microsoft Project got the treatment in its 2010 installment. Microsoft even helped users that were used to the old menu with this handy link, that I tweeted about a lot in early 2011, that switches between the old 2007 and the “new” 2010 ribbon.

Continue reading Building a custom UI for Microsoft Project 2013 ribbon

Must start/finish on constraints with a twist

Hi readers,

A while back I got an interesting reply on one of my blog posts. A top contributor of one of the LinkedIn forums I frequently visit had an interesting view on the Must Start/finish constraints that I was not aware of yet. So here is a post dedicated to Sai Prasad describing this behavior. Continue reading Must start/finish on constraints with a twist

Book review: Successful project management

Hi Readers,

I just finished another book and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. The book is called Successful project management with the sub title “Applying best practices and real-world techniques with Microsoft Project”. If that doesn’t sound like a good start I don’t know what does :-).

The book is written by Bonnie Biafore, who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Project Conference in Anaheim and who wrote an interesting guest post on The Project Corner concerning Multiple Baselines. If you’re reading this before the first of may 2014 you can even win this book by commenting on her guest post! Continue reading Book review: Successful project management