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Critical Activities in Red

9 replies [Last post]
Tue, 2007-01-23 06:23
Mark Chapman
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I am using MSP2003. I want my critical activities to always be displayed in red using the Gantt chart view just like P3. I know how to turn them red but I want this switch to be seamless rather than turning on/off etc.

Cheers in advance.
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Replies

Thu, 2007-02-08 06:47
#1
Trevor Rabey
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I hope I am not arguing.
suum cuique. to each his own.
The question made me think about why I like it that way, but it is just one opinion.
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Wed, 2007-02-07 10:32
#2
Trevor Rabey
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Alex,

a) if you use the wizard on any view, ie when in any view, you change the original formatting of that view. Usually, when you apply (the very few) options in the wizard to the Gantt Chart view, the changes are not severe. Same for using the wizard in/on other views, and you can use the wizard to reverse any of those changes. But the wizard doesn’t address anywhere near all of the possible format changes that can be made. Even the Page Setup, with footers etc, is stored as part of the view. It is possible to make lots of severe formatting and page setup changes to the Gantt Chart, or any other view, and you could make it a very ugly mess, or lose some of the original formatting or page setup which was serving some practical purpose. How do you get the original back, other than from a clean Global template?

You make some assumptions about the motivation at MS and the "intended" usage of the global template. Yes, it can be used to make available a standard set of views available for all projects. That standard set of views should consist of the clean originals as well as new, customised ones. There is no reason to even keep the new ones in the global template, and it is neater housekeeping to preserve the global template exactly as original, and keep all forms of customisation in separate templates.

There is no reason why a user defined template must only be used for entire "standard projects", and/or standard scope and WBS.

There is no reason why a user defined template cannot be used to store, and make available, customised formatting and page setups, ie views, as well as customised calendars, tables, fields, reports etc etc.

There good reasons for preserving the global exactly as original.
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Wed, 2007-01-24 20:00
#3
Trevor Rabey
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Mark,

be careful about over-writing the existing views, tables, reports etc that are in the global template with your modified versions of them. You will have no way to get back to the originals.

It is much neater to copy and re-name your version of the view, say "AAA Gantt Chart With Critical Red" and then get a fresh original Gantt Chart FROM the global template, then push your new view into the global template. Even better, you can store all special views in a template file of your own and leave the global as original.
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Tue, 2007-01-23 07:44
#4
Mark Chapman
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Well done Alexandre. Yes I had seen this before but it was about 18 months ago and this time I couldnt find it. Many thanks.
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Tue, 2007-01-23 06:40
#5
Will Russell
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You could create two "Views", identical apart from the redness of the critical path, you will then be able to switch between these two "Views".
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