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Creating an MS Project Schedule Presentation with OnePager Pro

How to make professional schedule presentations - Gantt Art - from Microsoft Project data

If you use Microsoft Project to manage your project plans and schedules today, you probably appreciate its ability to manage complex, lengthy projects. But what happens when you need to present your project plan to executives, clients, or regulators? The data you have in Microsoft Project is too detailed for your presentation, and redrawing your project schedule by hand as a Gantt chart in PowerPoint or Visio takes too much time and is error-prone.

Microsoft Project examples: A PowerPoint-ready project presentation view created from MS Project data using the OnePager Pro add-in

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Project presentations are much easier to create and to share with OnePager Pro, timeline software for Microsoft Project that lets users build dynamic project schedule presentations with the click of a button. We call it Gantt Art, and here's how to do it:

  1. Start by opening any Microsoft Project file.
  2. The key to building a professional project presentation is to only show tasks and milestones that matter to your audience. OnePager Pro makes this easy. Just insert any flag column into your Microsoft Project plan (Flag 20 in this example) and place a "Yes" or a "No" to indicate which tasks and milestones you want to include in your presentation:
    Standard Microsoft Project plan without a OnePager Pro visual.
  3. Double-click the OnePager Pro icon on your desktop. (Don't have OnePager Pro yet? You can download a 15-day free trial to see how it works.) From the Start screen that appears, choose New.
    OnePager Pro Start screen.
  4. Choose your Microsoft Project plan as the source file for your OnePager Gantt chart.
    OnePager Pro source file selection.
  5. Next, when the import wizard launches, you'll want to name your Chart. In this example, we'll call it "Bluegrass Project".
  6. Now, you can specify which Microsoft Project flag field you want to use to filter your subproject tasks and milestones. Click on Select tasks with 'YES' in column and then choose a flag field (in this example, Flag 20) as shown below:
    OnePager Pro enables you to import as much or as little project information as you would like so that you can create project timelines that are easy to understand.
  7. Specify a Snapshot (status) date for your presentation (today's date is fine) and click Create new Chart. OnePager will import your selected tasks and milestones and create a presentation-ready view that shows the schedule only for the tasks you selected:
    Microsoft Project examples: A PowerPoint-ready project presentation view created from MS Project data using the OnePager Pro add-in

You're done! You can cut and paste your OnePager Pro chart into a PowerPoint presentation or into an e-mail, and be ready to present your project in a matter of seconds.

When you create a project presentation from Microsoft Project using OnePager Pro, you can always rest assured that your schedule is based on data in your original project plan.

Customizable

You can easily customize the look and feel of your presentation:

  • Use conditional formatting to allow your data to drive coloring, shapes, fills, shape size, and more!
  • Group, sort tasks by any field in Microsoft Project (resources, phase, etc.).
  • Generate a project legend that makes it easy for your audience to understand your schedule.
  • Reposition or resize tasks or milestones anywhere on the page with a drag and drop interface.
  • Present important project data like percent complete, baselines, and critical path.
  • Change task labels without corrupting your original Microsoft Project file.
  • Customize the time axis to show all or part of a project, and to show any time unit (quarters, fiscal years, etc.)
  • Refresh your presentation with updated dates and task completion percentages any time your Microsoft Project plan changes.

OnePager Pro also allows you to create multiple presentations from the same Microsoft Project file. For example, if you have one presentation to an executive team, a second presentation to an engineering team, and a third presentation to a customer, you can use different Microsoft Project flag columns to select different portions of your project plan. You can use these flags to create completely separate presentations so that the people to whom you are presenting always see the correct amount of relevant project information--not too much and not too little.

Using OnePager Pro will allow you to create dynamic, informative project presentations with the click of a button, and it eliminates the need to rebuild your presentation by hand every time your project schedule changes.

Get started today by downloading a free trial or attending one of our demonstration webinars.

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