Project 2007: Printing Reports

It is nice to have all of the information about projects going on in your area in one centralized location. But, without the power of reports then this information may not be beneficial to anyone but you. Project 2007 gives options for many different types of reports.

Predefined reports are basic reports that Project has already designed for you. The reports falls under six different categories: Overview, Current Activities, Costs, Assignments, Workloads and Custom.

To print a basic report, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Reports icon from the Report menu.
2. Choose a report category by clicking on it and then click Select.
3. Next, click on a predefined report and click Select. (You can change some settings of predefined reports by clicking on Edit. Make the changes and then click OK before selecting the report again to print.)
4. Choose Page Setup if you will like to change the appearance of the report, such as changing the margins or page orientation.
5. If you are happy with the way the report looks, then click Print. Your predefined report is then sent to your printer.

If you choose Custom as your report category, you will need to create a custom report first. Once the report is created, then you can print it with the same instructions as above; all saved custom reports are listed under the Custom category.

To create a custom report, follow these steps:

1. Click Reports from the Report menu.
2. Click on the Custom icon, and then click Select.
3. From the Custom Reports dialog box, click on New and then Task.
4. Make sure you are in the Definition tab. Type in any name that you choose for the report in the Name field.
5. A time period needs to be selected from the Period list.
6. In the Count field, enter in the number of time periods that you want to display on the report.
7. In the Table field, select whichever table that you want.
8. In the Filter list, select the filter that you wish to have.
9. To show the filtered task with a different format than the others, select the Highlight option.
10. Change any formatting that you want and choose a sort order.

There may come a time when you want to present your project’s information in a PivotTable. This is where visual reports come in. There are six different categories for which you can have a visual report:

• Task Usage
• Resource Usage
• Assignment Usage
• Task Summary
• Resource Summary
• Assignment Summary

To create a visual report using a template, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Visual Reports icon on the Report menu.
2. Click on the report you want to create from the All tab.
3. Change the level of usage data that you want to conclude by choosing an option from the Select level of usage data to include in the report list.
4. Click View.

To create a new template for a visual report, follow these steps:

1. Click on Visual Reports from the Report menu.
2. Choose New Template.
3. Click Excel from the Select Application section if you want to create an Excel template or Visio if you want a Visio template.
4. Choose the type of data that will be used in the report from the Select Data Type. For the Visual Reports-Field Picker dialog box to appear, click on the Field Picker.
5. Once the dialog box has appeared, hold the CTRL key while selecting the fields that you want from the Available Fields box. Clicking Add will move all the fields to the Selected Fields box.
6. Do the same thing to the Available Custom Fields to add any custom fields to the report.

Visual Reports are new to Microsoft Project 2007. To read about other new features, check out this article.