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Microsoft Project 2000

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Good day,

I have a user who prints out a Gantt chart in MS Project 2000. This Gantt chart is a graphical representation of the daily tasks in a given project. On this printed chart, however, the NON-WORK hours appear — ie. 5:01pm to 8:59am. He doesn’t want 60% of each page dominated by these non-essential non-work hours.

Is there a way to filter out and/or exclude the NON-WORK hours in a Gantt chart print out?

Sounds simple enough but after mucking around with the MS Project Help and Technet Knowledge Base and specific internet queries for almost 2 hours, I have been unable to come up with a resolution.

Any input at all would be appreciated.

Thanks everyone.

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Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

It may look a nice option. However, most people do not work 24 hour a day. So it may be fair to show the time they are not working on the project. In reality many people may be working on projects outside the office hours. It would look as if these people do work without any value if you delete it from the Gantt chart.

If you show the chart on a less detailed scale there is no problem at all. Once you only want to show a project so detailed that one day would fit a page it is possible to specify in the print screen [file, print?] that you want to print from e.g. 08:00 to 17:00 hour [on the given day]

As example:
Dates From: Tue 4-6-02 8:00
To: Tue 4-6-02 17:00

Another possibility would be to buy cheaper paper. You couldfold away the non-working hours. Is it really a project with only white collar workers?

A last resource would be to render the Gantt chart [with the camera button], save it as a GIF and with a GIF editor crop the chart [in several parts]. In e.g.Word you could place all the parts again in sequence. There must be a while collar worker who loves to do this (expensive) job in order not to waste some paper.
Good luck.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

Good effort, DKlippert, but the problem still remains on the printout as I discovered yesterday: the hours between 5:00pm and 9:00am are still on the final print out.

I can’t think of any way of doing this from within Project without using Visual Basic to alter the printed objects definition.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

You can do this using Excel, but maybe not in Project.

Just to cover all bases, does any of the following help?

(Type the Q number in the search box at support.microsoft.com)

Nonworking Time, Format for Timescale Change Unexpectedly

Q113202

1. In a Gantt Chart view, choose Timescale from the Format menu.

2. Select the Nonworking Time tab.

3. Under Draw, select the Do Not Draw option, and choose OK.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

Good effort, DKlippert, but the problem still remains on the printout as I discovered yesterday: the hours between 5:00pm and 9:00am are still on the final print out.

I can’t think of any way of doing this from within Project without using VisualBasic to alter the printed objects definition.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

Good effort, DKlippert, but the problem still remains on the printout as I discovered yesterday: the hours between 5:00pm and 9:00am are still on the final print out.

I can’t think of any way of doing this from within Project without using VisualBasic to alter the printed objects definition.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

I believe you are using a setting that is pre-supposing a 24-hour day. You can define the working day as inside a specific start time and a specific finish time, and all tasks will be scheduled inside that interval. The non-working time is shown as the default on the Gantt chart, but this can be changed also.

As this article in the MS Knowledge Base points out, you can set the Gantt display to not show non-working time:
Nonworking Time, Format for Timescale Change Unexpectedly (Q113202)
Check it out at Microsoft.com in the Knowledge Base

Microsoft Project 2000

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The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

Microsoft Project 2000

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There seems to be some confusion when looking at answers #2 and #3. Show or do not show non working times have to do with the fact if the non working time is shown grey or not in a different colour.

This has nothing to do with shrinking the timescale.
See my answer #1.

If you do not like that situation you will have to export the data to e.g. Excel and make something over there yourself.

It is possible to export details to Excel.
Make an import/export table with e.g. task name, startdate-time and finish date-time
Suppose you have these details in columns A B and C [in Excel]

It would not be too complicated to set a start date for your bars. I would have to assume that you want only a limited period. Else I would not understand why you bother about non-working time. It should probably be with a timescale of hours or maybe half hours.
You would have to make a framework starting with a given date and a default start time, adding in each next column the time step [hour, half hour?] until the time would be beyond the default end time of the day. In the next column it should start at the begin time of the next working day. This is all possible; I have done it several times. With lookup you can even add special non-working days [vacation]. Probably above you would have to join cells to show the day of the week and there above for the day of the month. These cells have a reference to the first cell with date-time in each block. With conditional formatting it is possible to show grid lines between days. You even could alternate background colours for days of the week and months. With custom formatting only the hours can be shown in row 3, the day of the week in the joined cell above in row 2 and day of month +name of month in row 1.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

Each cell below would require conditional formatting to test if the time in row 3 >= start time and <= end time ? step. [If you still can follow me] The formatting would be such that a certain background colour would appear if the working time is within the limits. You could even use three different background colours, depending on another criterion [for instance the field critical]. This as conditional formatting allows three tests. A step further would be to put a formula in the cells whichwould put the task name or something else in the colour bar or left or right from it. [This would compare the start day-time with the hours above. You would run into problems if any activity starts outside your default working hours, although some formula could solve that as well] However, you should realise tat there are only 255 columns. It may take you some time to figure this all out. I assure you, it can be done. I did it before. Taking a drawing board and just colouring the boxesyourself is probably easier. The simplest solution remains not the bother about that so called useless paper with the non-working hours. Really good luck.

Microsoft Project 2000

In reply to Microsoft Project 2000

Sorry, it is not to bother about …

Microsoft Project 2000

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Microsoft Project 2000

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