Making subprojects' bars different colors

[immordino]

Hi there-

I'm a newby at Project, and would like to show several projects on one calendar (we are a creative agency and are deciding between several options for a project), so that their flow/dates, etc can be compared.

All I want to do is have the bars for each project in the calendar and Gantt views be assigned that project's identifying color.

Every time I do this, every project's bars are changed to the new color.

Thanks so much for your help.

 

[BTuffery]

Have you tried right clicking on the bar you want to change and selecting the format bar? this allows you to chance the colour and style of that bar only. To change all bar colours go to format - bar styles.

Hope that helps

Beth

 

[PDQBach]

Project has considerable granularity in some of its display properties.

As you've discovered, the bar colours chosen for a particular file are reserved for that file and are not "brought along" when that file is inserted into a new master project.

For the others reading this thread, the bar colours are unique to a view, as well. If you set up a bar colour of magenta in the View | Gantt display, you won't see magenta coloured bars in the View | Tracking Gantt display, nor will you see magenta bars in the Calendar display.

Some Views have greater degrees of colour customization than others. View | Gantt gives you considerable control over the colours; View | Calendar does not.

If you can compromise and use the Gantt display (I've never liked the calendar display) then read the thread "Assign Gantt Bar Color To Resource" and use the 'same technique but' in the master project.

In project1 always set Flag1 to true in every task; in project2 always set flag2 to true in every task; in project3 ... well, you get the picture.

In the Master project click on View | Gantt, then click on Format | Bar styles... and follow the same concept as described in the thread to assign bar colours based on the value in Flag1, Flag2, etc. If you're using P98 then your limitation is that this will only work for up to 10 projects (only 10 flags are available). I don't have P2000+ on this machine and can't remember how many flags are available in Format | Bar styles in that version of the program (30?).