Adding New Tasks
- Start with a new Microsoft Project plan. You can do this by launching MS Project, and clicking on the Blank Project icon:
- Left-click into the first cell under the "Task Name" column and type in the name of your task name. Be descriptive, but keep it short:
- Once you've entered the name of your task, click on the "Duration" column and enter the number of working days that you expect the task to take. In this example, we'll schedule the task for 30 working days, so we can just enter "30" and press ENTER. You don't need to type "days". Microsoft Project will automatically assume that all of your durations are in working days, unless you say otherwise.
- Now, click into the "Start" column and enter the date when you would like the task to start. As soon as you press enter on the start date, notice that Microsoft Project automatically calculates the finish date based on the duration you entered in the previous step:
- From here, you can continue to add more tasks underneath the first task, until your Microsoft Project schedule looks something like this:
Adding Tasks in the Middle of your Microsoft Project Plan
What happens if you think that you are finished building your Microsoft Project plan, but you forgot to add a task in the middle? Don't worry! You don't have to undo all of your work or start over. Instead, you can insert a task into the middle of the other tasks in your project plan.
- To insert a task in the middle of existing Microsoft Project tasks, select the task below where you want to insert the new task. In this example, we want to insert a new task between "Task B" and "Task C", so we'll make sure that "Task C" is selected:
- Press the INSERT key on your keyboard:
- You should now have a blank row in Microsoft Project, which will give you space to enter the new task:
- Enter the new task just as you would any other task:
