MS Project Interactive 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).
The diagram below shows my criteria on the right, and the two dialog boxes that appear when the filter is applied:
MS Project Auto 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 and in this instance, you can select all or one of the criteria to change.
MS Project Highlight Filters
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 select 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
Create your own custom Highlight Filter:
Here is an example of a pre-designed Highlight Filter, the Milestone Filter
