Filter Design in Microsoft Project 2010
Design your own Microsoft 2010 Project Filter
Microsoft project contains many pre-designed filters, but what if none of them fits your purpose and you need to design your own?
To design and tailor your own filter you need to specify a field name, a test, and a value.
Here is a simple Filter Design example:
Critical (the field name) Equals (the test) Yes (the value)
You can also include additional qualify as to the filter such as:
Actual Cost (the field name) Is Greater Than (the test) 4,400 (the value)
Defining Your Own Microsoft Project 2010 filter
- Choose View, Filter, More Filters The More Filters dialog box appears:
As an alternative, you may also: - Chose View, Filter, New Filter. The only difference here is that the More Filters option allows you the option of modifying an existing filter as well as the option of creating a new filter.
- Select the task or resource filter option (this will depend upon in which view you wish to use it as well as your filtering purpose)
- New – click the New button and the filter dialog box appears:
- In the Name Field, type a meaningful name for your filter
- Click on the first line of the Field Name column, and click the down arrow to see the list of choices as below:
- Click a field name to select it, and repeat for the Test and Value(s) columns.
- Test describes a condition that must be met such as ‘greater than’ or ‘does not equal’ whereas Value(s) is a value that you enter and can be a date or a cost for example, but you could enter a predetermined value instead, such as a baseline cost for example.
Here is an example filter that I have just created in order to filter out any task that is above 50% complete AND whose actual cost is still below (less than) the planned baseline cost (you could have just used one row to define your filter if required):
- Note above that I have checked the Show related summary rows, so that the filter ALSO shows any summary bars that the filtered task relates to, and that I have asked this new filter name to be added to the choices of the original filter list by checking the Show in menu box.
- Here is the resultant view when choosing that filter:
- Click on the [No Filter] menu selection to return to your full non-filtered view.
- Don’t forget to Save your file before closing it if you want to retain your new filter for future use.
Interactive Microsoft Project 2010 Filters
These types of filters ask for specific information to be entered in dialog boxes as part of their application (rather than just applying the criteria without any human interaction).
An example of an existing Interactive filter is the Date Range… filter:
Here you can see above on the left, one of the two dialog boxes than appear when you select that filter. On the right above you can see the criteria for that filter. Note the Value(s) field. To make a filter interactive, but appropriate text within quotation marks.
Open the nearly_critical_macro.mpp file, and note that I have created a filter called nearly_critical.
When applying it, two dialog boxes appear, one for Free Slack and the second for Total Slack (Free and Total Slack are often the same numerically, but they can differ), and I included a test NOT to show any critical tasks (since their free and total slack will be zero by definition).
AutoFilters and Highlight Filters
The AutoFilter is turned on by default for all new schedule files. To select/de-select the AutoFilter function, go to File, View, Data, and select the Filter pull-down menu:
Above left you could select the pre-designed filters, or the customer filter that was designed by myself earlier.
The lower red arrow shows where to click to select or deselect the AutoFilter function, and there is a useful filter for only showing tasks with a selected resource name (above, bottom-right).
For now, we will select the Display AutoFilter command, which will show a small pull down arrow in the header field of each row (above, top-right).
Here have selected the AutoFilter from the Work Table. In this instance, you can select all or one of the criteria to
change. To select that option, click on the OK button:
A Highlight filter works to meet your selection criteria by rather than remove non-matching filter items from view, it keeps all items in view but simply highlights each item that meet your criteria.
In a similar way to the AutoFilter, using a Highlight Filter
Can be selected from File, View, Data, and click on the
Pull down menu for the Highlight: field.
Again, a pre-designed filter could be selected as before,
As well as options for created a new customer Highlight Filter,
Clearing existing selected filters, or to view the dialog box to
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