Did you know that OnePager can automatically remove inactive tasks from your report, even if you still have them flagged for import in Microsoft Project?

Let’s start with a simple Microsoft Project schedule. Notice that all five tasks are active, and all five tasks have “Flag 20” set to “Yes”:

We will build our OnePager chart to filter based on “Flag 20” but not initially consider whether a task is active or inactive, giving us this first view of all five tasks:

Now, we can go back to Microsoft Project and set the last two tasks as inactive. They will immediately turn gray and have a “strikeout” font in the project plan, making them pretty easy to spot.

If I were to refresh my OnePager chart now, nothing would change, because only “Flag20” is being used to determine which tasks are included. However, I can change my filtering in OnePager to consider both “Flag20” and whether or not the task is active.

Before I do this, I want to make sure that when inactive tasks are removed, OnePager not only removes the task, but also hides the row that the task was in. This will prevent the chart from having gaps or blank rows where the inactive tasks used to be.

To double-check this, go to Home > Project View Properties > Advanced, and click on the Row Hiding Options button. Make sure that the second box (Hide newly-empty rows on import) is checked. We usually turn this on by default, so you’ll probably find that it’s already enabled:

Once you’ve checked that, go to Data > Custom Update. Instead of performing your update solely using “Flag20”, we’ll want to use OnePager’s custom filtering option, so select that radio button and then click Edit Filter:

We’ll create a two-rule filter. The first rule will continue to look at “Flag20” while the second rule will also consider whether the task is active:

Make sure that you set up your rules so that ALL of the following are true. This will ensure that only tasks that are both flagged and active will appear on your timeline. Otherwise, you could end up with some flagged tasks that are inactive and some un-flagged tasks that are active, which is not what you want.

With this filter in place, finish your update, and you’ll see that OnePager automatically removes the inactive tasks: