Project 2007: Creating a Master Project

Soon after you begin managing your first project, you learn that project management can be challenging. Even more of a challenge is managing one very large project or lots of smaller projects. Implementing master projects in Project can ease some of the burden.

Master projects are individual project files that contain other separate inserted project files. These inserted project files are called subprojects. This means that you can use one master project to view several small subprojects all on one screen. Each of the subprojects can be managed separately, either by you or by another project manager.

What's more, when subprojects are grouped into one master project, your filters, views, and reports will reflect the data from all projects combined. This allows you to see the “big picture” of your project management responsibilities in one place.

Creating a master project is not too difficult. To create a master project, follow these steps:

1. Open the project that you want to become a master project.
2. Choose View, and choose Gantt Chart.
3. In the Task Name field, click the row below where you want to insert the project. You can insert a project anywhere in the outline.
4. Choose Insert, and choose Project.
5. In the Insert Project dialog box, browse to the project to insert, select it, and click Insert.

There are additional options when inserting projects:

• To insert multiple projects, hold down CTRL and click the projects in the order that you want to insert them.
• To insert a project and to make the inserted project read-only, click the down arrow on the Insert button and then choose Insert Read-Only. See the figure below.
• If you do not want the subproject to be automatically updated with changes from the original project or if you don't want to show changes from the subproject in the original project, clear the Link To Project check box. See the figure below.

With permission from Microsoft Press, this article content was excerpted from the book, Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007 (Self-Paced Training Kit for Exam 70-632).