How to create a Custom View to Inspect a Task / Activity Predecessor & Successor

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    • #415528
      Abhishek Bagaria
      Guest

      Hi, I have a 500+ line MS Project plan. There are some activities that have more than 10 Predecessor & Successors. Is there a view available in MS Project 2016 Standard where when I click on the activity and it displays me all the associated Predecessors and Successors ALONG WITH the Start / End date of the them and % complete status.

      I know there is a view under Tasks -> Details (shows split view) and I can right click to customize it to see the Predecessor & Successor but the split view does NOT show the start / end dates and whether the activities are marked completed or still in progress. It only shows the associated Predecessor & Successors. How do I customize this view ? Happy to share a screenshot, if needed / possible.

      Any help / guidance is much appreciated.

      Thanks,

      Abhi

    • #415529
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      Hi Abhishek, great question. I don’t know of any way to do specifically what you are asking out of the box. There may be a way to help using VBA but I don’t know how (might be worth a search). Best answer I can provide is to try this.
      1. Setup the view to display predecessors through Task Path (Format tab, Task Path, Predecessors). This is to help visualize the predecessors for a particular task.
      2. Display the split screen with the Task Sheet on the bottom

      Select a task with predecessors. Now using the Ctrl key, continue selecting each of the predecessor tasks identified in the task path.
      Those tasks will display in the task sheet below with all the information available. Sorry, best I can think of without VBA. Hope that helps…

    • #415531
      Thomas Boyle
      Guest

      Abhishek,
      As Larry says, there’s no such view in MS Project. You could definitely make a form to incorporate the needed information using vba, but I’d guess the required effort precludes any really good freeware solutions.

      I developed a similar tool for internal use, which I wrote about here:
      Task Inspector Blog Entry
      It’s no longer free, but there is an unrestricted 14-day Trial version available.

    • #415543
      Abhishek Bagaria
      Guest

      Thank you Larry & Thomas for your response.

      Larry – sorry, but I am not able to follow your instructions to navigate. Perhaps a little more detail would help.

      Thomas – Thx for your response. This is exactly what I am looking for. Where can I download the trial version from to play with? I’ll have to install it on my personal laptop. Unfortunately, we have restrictions to install plugins or third party s/w on my work laptop 🙁

    • #415544
      Larry Christofaro
      Participant

      1. From the gantt chart, select to show predecessors using the task path (Format tab, Task Path, Predecessors). If you don’t see this then you don’t have a recent enough Project version. This gives you a visual of all the predecessor of a particular task.
      2. Split the screen to show the two panes (View tab, Details)
      3. Select the bottom pane and display the Task Sheet table (Task tab, View Task Sheet)
      4. On your upper Gantt chart view, use the Ctrl key to select a task with predecessors and all predecessor tasks (at the same time). The original task with predecessors will continue to highlight predecessor tasks while you continue to select those tasks.

      The Task Sheet will show you all the predecessor tasks along with any column that you choose to include in the table.
      Hope that helps…

    • #415545
      Thomas Boyle
      Guest

      Abhishek,

      You should be able to follow links from the blog entry. Otherwise Google and Bing are your friends….

      Good luck, tom

    • #415713
      Timothy Jones
      Participant

      I have a trace macro that I can share if anyone’s interested. It will trace predecessors, successors, or both. It sets Flag 5 to yes. The code was from a PDF file that came with an MS Project 2003 book. I only had to make a few small changes to get it to run. Let me know and I can post the code for the macro.

    • #416516
      Rena Stearns
      Participant

      Hi Tim, I would be interested in that macro.

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