# Introduction

Microsoft Project automatically applies an effective and eye-pleasing format to your views, whether you’re viewing them on screen or in print. But the default format may not meet your needs. You might, for instance, want to highlight certain information or print project documents so that they’re consistent with corporate standards. Using Microsoft Project’s powerful formatting tools to modify your project plan, you can:

- Format text elements, including the appearance of individual pieces of information and column headings in sheet views.
- Format Gantt bars, changing their shape and pattern, adding text to them, changing the look of link lines, and so on.
- Format timescales to view your project at the level of detail you want.
- Format gridlines, changing their color, pattern, and other characteristics.
- Sort a view, so that information appears in an order that’s useful to you.

You can also focus attention by applying formatting to text or Gantt bars that identify all tasks or all resources that belong to predefined Microsoft Project categories. For instance, critical tasks, milestone tasks, and summary tasks are among the task categories you can format. Allocated resources and overallocated resources are two of the resource categories you can format.

To spice up your views even further, you can import graphics from other programs. In addition, you can capture selected portions of your views and export them as graphics to other programs. Because you’re likely to use the Gantt Chart view to perform many of your project management tasks, this chapter focuses on ways to format the Gantt Chart. But you’ll be able to apply many of these formatting methods to other sheet views as well. The special role of the Gantt Chart is underscored in this chapter by a discussion of the GanttChartWizard, which helps you redesign the Gantt Chart view exactly as you want it to appear.

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