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Tips and Tricks for Project Show filtered tasks with other tasks

  • Article

Sometimes, when filtering tasks, wouldn’t it be great if you could see filtered tasks with all the tasks, at the same time? Maybe you want to view filtered tasks within the context of all tasks.

For example, Knowing which tasks have deadlines and which don’t can help you prioritize tasks by deciding, say, where to re-allocate resources on the project as important deadlines begin to loom.

Welcome to filter highlighting.

Here are two task lists. The first has not been filtered. The second one has been filtered to show tasks that have a deadline—with the filtered tasks highlighted in blue.

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Here’s how to create a highlighted filter in Project.

  1. In Project 2007, on the Project menu, click Filtered For, and then click More Filters.
    In the dialog box. select the filter you want to apply (or create a new filter).
  2. Click the Highlight button. NoteViewHighlightimage
  3.   
  4. In Project 2010, on the
  5. tab, select the type of filter you want to highlight in the
  6. list:
  7.  

Presto! You’ll see the filtered tasks highlighted.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2010
    Is there any way to control the formatting of the highlights ?  For example, what if I want the background color of the cells for Late Tasks to turn Yellow (instead of the text turning blue) ?  Is there a way to control this ?

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2010
    Nevermind.  I figured it out.  I changed the Text Style for Highlighted Text (under the 'Format' tab) to have a yellow background.  Works great!

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2010
    Good comment? I'll update our Help content to add this tip.

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2010
    OK...I got how to highlight filtered tasks.  But the BIG question I have is, for Project 3003 and/or 2007 how do I now remove the highlight, so that I can only see the filtered tasks again?

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2010
    To turn off the highlight to display only filtered tasks, reapply the filter. Instead of clicking Highlight, just click the name of the filter. Hope this helps.

  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2010
    Here's more info on filtering, with video: http://bit.ly/FilterboJMUg  

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2011
    On my schedule in Project 2007, I want to show only incomplete tasks, AND I want to highlight the the incomplete tasks that start in a 3-week window starting on a given date. Can this be done? How?

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2011
    You can't use a Filter and Highlight filter at the same time. The simpler solution to your question would be to set the filter for incomplete tasks and then to sort by start date. This way it would be easy to see tasks that fell into that three week time period. The more complex solution to your question would involve using macros. You could still filter for incomplete tasks and then write a macro to set the Marked field to yes for tasks that fall into that three week window. Then if you go to Text Styles you can define a background color for Marked tasks. The Marked field is a field that comes in by default in Project but Project never sets. You can use it to drive custom text styles.