Sukumaran,
Zhang is right, You can format your summary bar by modifying bar style.
As all other friends are expressing their views about this creativity work is fine. We are not comparing here MSP with P3, we just want to find a solution to help some one who want to do some thing with MSP. Niek is correct, it is really difficult to manage so many custom fields in complex project.

I don’t want to be the one to spoil this party because the creativity is well appreciated; however I would like to add some remarks.

1) the same do’s and don’ts as mentioned earlier still apply

2) There is no integrity check on the overall code mask, because you now revert to individual fields that have a singular value list at best. This implies that you can create code combinations that do not exist. For instance, if you group by country and then by city you can end up with Tokyo in the USA and London in Tanzania.

3) Data entry is going to be very tedious because you need to enter/maintain all individual fields separately and maintain the integrity.

4) If you want to edit or change activities you’ll need to revert to the regular summary task view, losing sight of what you were doing. In large schedules this is not a workable situation.

So without degrading this creativity in any way, be careful what you are doing, it is not P3 (or any other Primavera software).

Hi Sukumaran Subaramaniyan,

From format menu, open bar styles, then delete "*group by summary"

Guys,

Attached is the image for your review:


As you can see the summary bars appear on each band. In P3 we can hide or show the summary bars for each band. Any facilities in MSP.

Raj,
I didn’t click the "show summary tasks". It appear automatically when I do grouping.

Regards.

Zhang,

Yes, using custom fields the activities can be grouped and arranged on hierarchical basis. But when I create a few levels then extra summary bars appear on each level. Any idea how to remove the unwanted summary bar on each level.

I don’t have this problem when use outline number. It all in order.

Regards.

Hi,

custom fields are non-hierarchical,but you can make it hierarchical.
e.g. text1.text2.number1 or, text2.text1.number1

It’s more flexible than outline

Hi Maria,

This bunch of encules, they have given you a run for your money - they are male chauvinists, ignore them and send me the problem, I will try to help out.

That’s because a view is associated with a table, and the same table can be used in different views.

What you need is a proper manual. (I can recommend Using MS Project 2003 from Tim Pyron, QUE series)

Text fields are more flexible and do not require you to define a mask.

If you want to use a text field for grouping activities I would nonetheless recommend you to create a mask. (called value list in custom fields) This to avoid typo’s, etc.

They do however not support hierarchical structures so you can’t roll up (i.e. summarise) your categories when you use custom fields.

Custom fields are non-hierarchical (so not really like P3) and the same do’s and don’ts apply.

Maria,

Please be aware that there are quite some do’s and don’ts around outline codes in MSP.

For instance, don’t change the code mask unless you want to purge your existing outline codes in that group.

You can’t insert activities in outline mode and dragging doesn’t work either.

Be aware that outline codes also work on summary tasks so they can conflict with the tasks underneath. You need to guard that integrity.

In other words: it looks like P3 but it does not match P3.

Hope this helps,

Niek.

Maria,

Try Outline Structure.

Regards.

Hi,

It not possible. Maybe the software company don’t want their product to look like P3.