Improving Efficiencies by using the Organizer
If you are like most people who use MS Project in order to manage a project, you likely only use some of the “out of the box” views and tables that come with the product. You may also perform some of the same modifications to those fields, views, groups, tables, etc. over and over again on each project in order to get the Gantt chart just the way you like it.
There is a better and more efficient way to customize data rather than starting from scratch each time you create a project plan (assuming you do not use MS Project Server). In an earlier posting, “Simple Techniques for Managing Project Finances”, I explain how to setup custom fields and groupings, and then add them to the Gantt chart. I did not however, address how you can save these customizations so that on your next project you do not have to perform the same setup again.
You can use the Organizer in order to store these customizations in what is called the Global.mpt. The global template in MS Project is used when you start a project plan from a blank slate. The organizer is accessed by clicking on the Tools>>Organizer menu selection.
Once the organizer is open, you can simply navigate through the tabs and move the custom data from the right side of the organizer to the left side. Make sure to select the template you wish to save data to from the drop down at the bottom of the screen. Once the data element is in the template area, you are finished. Now anytime you open a new project file, it will use the global.mpt and already contain all the customizations.
This trick has saved me countless hours of project planning startup time!
