BY: Tanya Foster

Have you ever noticed that there is more than one way to do the same thing in Microsoft Project?  I didn’t specify a version, because I’ve noticed it in multiple versions of Microsoft Project.  That’s one thing I love about Project… you’re shortcut may not be my shortcut, but we both end up at the same place.  Now this may not be the case for everything in Microsoft Project, but for several things, it’s definitely the case.  Take linking tasks for example.  Let’s say you have a schedule, and the tasks are going to be sequential.  I would just quickly highlight the tasks and hit the link button on the menu bar.  I had a colleague once that liked to see how one task related to the other and if there were any tweaks he needed to make at that point and time. 

So he would double click on a task to open the task information box, type the linking and task information in there and then move on to the next task. 

Me… I’ll link them, then I’ll see how they line up and I’ll tweak them if need be.  We’ll both have the same outcome, we just get there different ways.  And thank goodness that Microsoft took both of our personalities into consideration when creating Microsoft Project!  Well… I’m sure if we asked the programmers, the users different personalities was probably the furthest thing from their mind, but hey… it worked out!

Another great example is assigning resources.  Once you’ve added resources to your team, you can simply add resources by selecting them from the drop down box.

Or you can assign them by using the Assign Resources dialog box.

How about task entry?  Couple of different ways for that too!  Just type it in, right in the Task Name cell of an empty cell.  Double click an empty cell and bring up the task information box and fill out all of the information that way, or right mouse click, select Insert Task type in the task name when it inserts a new empty cell. 

Now it’s your turn.  Let us know of any great shortcuts you’ve found or multiple ways of doing things in Microsoft Project.  If we get enough feedback from you, our faithful readers, we’ll post the list as a future blog post!