Creating Custom Calendar and Crosstab Reports in Project 2007

In the first part of this series, we walked through the steps of creating a custom report by editing an existing report and then moved on to show how to create a new custom resource report. Now, in part two, we focus on custom calendar and crosstab reports in Project 2007.

Once you've read through this guide, be sure to check out the other Microsoft Project tutorials available on Bright Hub's Project Management channel.

It is also possible to create a monthly calendar report. This report can contain filters to filter tasks, work, and other data; a calendar; and labels with ID, Name, and Duration, among others. To create a custom calendar report, follow these steps:

1. Choose Report, and choose Reports.
2. Select Custom, and then click Select.
3. Click New, select Monthly Calendar, and then click OK. (To edit a monthly calendar report, click its name in the Reports box and then click Edit.)
4. In the Monthly Calendar Report Definition dialog box, type a name for the report.
5. Select the calendar that you want to use from the Calendar drop-down list.
6. Select the Gray Nonworking Days check box to show nonworking days in gray.
7. Select the Solid Bar Breaks check box to show a solid line at the end of a bar when a task continues into the next week.
8. Select the Print Gray Bands check box to show a gray divider line between the dates that separate task information that doesn't fit on the calendar.
9. Select Bars, Lines, or Start/Finish dates to format how tasks are shown in a monthly calendar report.
10. Select or clear the ID, Name, and Duration check boxes to format task labels in a monthly calendar report.
11. Click OK.

Although you are probably already familiar with task, resource, and calendar reports because those are some of the most commonly used reports, crosstabs have not yet been introduced in this training kit. A crosstab report customizes the information that it displays based on a specified period of time. A sample crosstab report is shown in above figure.

To create a custom crosstab report, follow these steps:

1. Choose Report, and choose Reports.
2. Select Custom, and then click Select.
3. Click New, select Crosstab, and then click OK. (To edit a crosstab report, select its name in the Custom Reports dialog box, and then click Edit.)
4. In the Definition tab, type a name for the report in the Name box.
5. In the Crosstab section, select the time period that you want to display.
6. Select whether to display tasks or resources from the Row drop-down list.
7. Select the task or resource field that you want to appear in the crosstab report from the field drop-down list. (This is the unlabeled drop-down list displayed to the right of the Row drop-down list.)
8. Select either the And Resource Assignments or the And Task Assignments check box to include resource assignments with tasks or resources.
9. Select a filter to display from the Filter drop-down list.
10. Select the Highlight check box to show the filtered items with different formatting.
11. In the Details tab, select the format that you want from the Date Format drop-down list.
12. To include zero values, select the Show Zero Values check box.
13. In the Sort tab, select the field that you want to sort by in the Sort By drop-down list and then select Ascending or Descending.
14. To sort by the second or third sort criteria, select the field that you want in the appropriate Then By drop-down list and then select Ascending or Descending.
15. Click OK.

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).