How can I create custom graph reports in Project 2003?

[Danseg]

How can I create in Project 2003 graph reports for all kind of activities,
not only for recourses load? For instance, I need to see my budget flow in
graphical way, or S-curve graph such as I can do it in Primavera.

 

[John]

How can I create in Project 2003 graph reports for all kind of activities,
not only for recourses load? For instance, I need to see my budget flow in
graphical way, or S-curve graph such as I can do it in Primavera.

Danseg,
Unfortunately Project's graphing capability is very limited. In order to
create custom charts you will need to export Project's data to another
application such as Excel. There are several options for exporting the
data from Project to Excel.

A simple but somewhat tedious method is to simply set up one or more
Project views that contain the data you want to graph and then copy and
paste the data into Excel. This works best if the amount of data is not
large and you don't need to graph it regularly.

A second approach is to try using a combination of an export map (for
static data) and the "analyze timescale data in Excel" add-in/utility
(for timescaled data). For the timescale data, you will get a slightly
different "cut" depending on which view (Task or Resource) is active
when the export is initiated. For more information on export maps, see
the Project Help file.

By far the most flexible method is to create a custom VBA macro. With
VBA any Project data can be exported and formatted/graphed in Excel in
any way needed. However this approach does require knowledge of VBA or
the help of someone who has that knowledge.

Since you mentioned an S-curve, you might be interested in visiting the
website of fellow MVP, Rod Gill at:
http://www.msproject-systems.com

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Kevin]

There are a couple ways I have found to do this. One of the best ways is to
use the VBA functionality in MSProject to output your selected data directly
to Excel (or an intermediate text or csv file if there is a lot of data), and
generate your graphics in Excel. You can code all of this right into an
Project macro, add a button to your tool bar, and assign the macro to the
button. That way you can run the report/graph with nothing more than a
mouseclick. I have set up quite a few reports this way, and they act just
like they were part of the Project application. Just be sure that you save
the macros in your global.mpt file for future use.

Another way is to save your project as an Access database, then setup your
reports/graphs in Access. You can setup queries and filters in Access ahead
of time so that it will prompt you for report specific data such as date
range, etc... This way you do not have to recreate the wheel when generating
recurring reports.

 

[stuart block]

Kevin, Your idea sound great for using Access.

I am currently looking down this route for multiple project. But I am stuck
on a query to extract timescaled resource data for different projects or
resources ?

Can you help ??? Thanks Stuart