From the course: Microsoft Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Essential Training

Set helpful Project options

From the course: Microsoft Project 2021 and Project Online Desktop Essential Training

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Set helpful Project options

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- [Instructor] Project has dozens of options. So you can tell it how you want it to behave. Many of the default settings are fine for most people, but here are some you might want to change. In Project, go to the file tab to get to the backstage. Then on the left hand side, go down and click options. That opens up the project options dialogue box and it starts in the general category. We're going to go to the project view section and look at date format. Here the format is set to show the day of the week and a concise date format. If I click the down arrow, you can see that there are lots of formats that you can choose from. If you want to see the time, you can include that and you can spell out the month if you want, or use very long or very short formats. I usually work with a very concise format, but you can switch back and forth if you need more space on the screen or you want to see date and time. Now let's go to the schedule category. Go down to the scheduling options for this project section. You can see that it's set to all new projects, which is actually what I want. And that's because I'm not looking at a project file right now. So we're going to keep that set the way it is. The first box is for new tasks created. And this is where you set the task mode. If it's set to manually scheduled, I recommend changing it to auto scheduled. That means that project can use its scheduling engine to calculate when the tasks should occur. Then let's go down a little bit further to the checkbox new tasks are effort driven. If that isn't turned on, turn it on. This means that the total work or effort for a task remain the same as you modify resource assignments. For example, if you add a resource to a task, the task duration decreases because the work is split between two people and that's usually what you want. Next, I recommend turning off auto link inserted or move tasks. That way the links are created or modified only when you explicitly create or change them. Now let's go to the save category. You can specify where you want your files to be saved. I've created a special folder on my computer for my Project files. So I'm going to click browse and go to that folder. Now you can see that this modify location opens up to the folder that's already specified. So I can scroll down, select the folder I want, and click okay. Now with this setting in place, when the save as dialogue box opens, it's going to open to this file location. Next turn on the check box to auto save your file. I like to set it to 60 minutes. It's a good compromise between saving your work and having some interruptions. I also turn on prompt before saving. That way Project will ask you if you want to save the file and you can say yes or no. I always do that because if I'm in the middle of some what if experiment, I don't want project to save the file. Then turn on the check box save to computer by default if you want project to save the files on your computer. Otherwise, it will automatically save to One Drive. Now let's go to the advanced section. In the general section on this screen, if the prompt for Project info for new projects check box isn't turned on, turn it on. That way the project information dialogue box will open when you create a new project so you can put in new information about that project. Finally, down at the bottom of the list, click trust center. On the right side, click the button trust center settings. In the legacy format section, it's set to not open or save files with legacy or non default file formats in Project. That means if you have to open up a project file that's a very old format, Project just won't do it. I think a better way is to prompt when loading these files. That way, if you have to open a file, you can just tell Project yes, this one I want to open. Now that you've specified all these settings, go ahead and click okay to close that dialogue box and then click okay to close the Project options dialogue box. Those are a few options you might want to change in Project.

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