Building your first Microsoft list

- [Instructor] Think of a project you've been wanting to start. No matter what the project is, there's no better place to put ideas down than with a list. Your brain is already full of information. Let lists help keep your project organized. In this lesson, I'll show you how to create your first list. In this example, I'm going to use lists to track my budget for a client of my wedding planning business. To get started, in the top left corner of office.com, I'll select the app launcher and open lists. To create a new list, I'll select new list. This dialogue allows you to create a blank list, a list from Excel or from an existing list. I can also create a list from a template. None of these templates are exactly what I want so I'll create a blank list. For the name, I'll enter wedding planning budget. And for the description, I'll enter new client wedding planning budget. I will leave the color and icon as a default settings but you can change them if you want to. I'll save this new list to my list so I can find it later. These details look good to me so I can now select create. By default, a list starts with a single column named title. I'll rename the title column to item by selecting the dropdown arrow next to title and then select column settings and rename. I'll enter item and then select save. I'll use this column to enter the item I need to budget like a photographer, a florist and a venue. But just knowing the things I need to budget isn't quite enough information. I'll use a budget column to record how much each item should cost. I'll also need a column to record how much was spent. This way, we can see if the client is on budget or not. To add another column I'll select add column. Lists have several standard column types. I'll choose currency then I'll name it budget and select save. And now I'll create the actual expense column. Again, I'll select add column, select currency and I'll name this column actual. Select save and there it is. Now that I have the column set up, I can enter in the budget for each vendor. I will add my first budget item by selecting new in the top left corner. I will enter a title for the item photographer and add a budget of $1,200. I haven't purchased this yet, so I will leave the actual field blank. I can then select save to add the photographer. We've already paid for the venue. So I'll select new, name the item venue and then enter $5,000 in the budget box. We actually spent $5,225 so I'll enter that in the actual expense box then save the item. If I need to see the columns in a different order, I can reorder them by dragging the column to where I want it. I'd like to see the actuals before the budget so I can drag the column before budget. And that's it. Try moving a project that you're currently tracking on paper into lists. It can help you supercharge your project. Think about an upcoming project deadline and try building it out in Microsoft lists. You're on your way to staying organized.