From the course: Learning Microsoft Project for the Web (Planner Web App)

Creating multiple levels

From the course: Learning Microsoft Project for the Web (Planner Web App)

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Creating multiple levels

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- [Instructor] With the enhanced task capabilities of up to 1,000 items, you may find it challenging to scroll through this entire list to locate what you're looking for. I recommend instead, you set up a multi-level structure so you can navigate by headings and some people call those phases of your project. So let's review how to do that. We have already covered the bottom up approach to planning your project, which is listing out your task items and filling in durations for those items. Now what we're going to do is add some headings and indent items underneath, also called making them sub-tasks. Just as a review, you can right-click and add a new row above, and this is going to be my heading. Now, what I can do is select one or multiple items, note I'm using the shift key there, right-click and make a sub-task. What Project does for you is automatically turn that into a heading. The duration becomes calculated based on everything below it, and it is now collapsible at your convenience. Now, if you like the keyboard, you can select an item, hold alt and shift, and use the right arrow key to indent or make it a sub-task and then the reverse is alt shift left arrow. If you're not keyboard oriented, you could right click on an item and promote. Some people call that out-dent whatever you prefer to call it. Now let's pretend we indented too far. Let's see what happens. Here's an example. I really did not want item five underneath item four. How do I fix that? A mistake a lot of people make is they go to item four and they try to promote it, but you can't go back any farther than it already is. The only way to fix a heading is to fix what's underneath and let me do that. I will just promote this item. Now you can do whatever you want with item four. Another tip I want to give you is maybe you need another way to help you navigate through a multi-level structure. You can add a column called outline number and it will identify for you what level something is. Now, just for convenience I'm going to move this a little closer to the task name. Now I can easily determine is it a main heading or a sub item. This is a great way to help you audit your schedule. Another way I audit my schedule is I might collapse a heading and see if everything is hidden underneath. If not, I probably missed a few items. Some people call these headings summary tasks or project phase items. After you have your multi-level structure in place, notice how easy it is to navigate through your list and easily direct your eyes to the information you're looking for. Another takeaway for you, if you use Microsoft Word, try the alt shift right arrow alt shift left arrow to work with the Heading styles. So use the right-click trick when you want to indent an item or make it a sub-task. The reverse is true when you want to promote it or take it back. You can also use the keyboard if you prefer and the heading rows will automatically calculate a duration for you and they become collapsible items. Organizing your project with these collapsible headings is a great way to navigate through a thousand line schedule and it makes you more organized and it's the preferred way to demonstrate project phases.

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