Project 2016 for Beginners Part 8: How to Open and Close a Project Video Lecture | MS Project: Become an Expert - Management

Welcome back to our course on Project 2016.
In this section I’m going to look at opening
and closing projects.
And before I do that the very first thing
I need to do is to save the first version
of the wedding plan.
And I’m going to talk more about saving
in a couple of sections time.
For the moment I’m going to save this to
the course file folder with a very straightforward
file name and then we’re going to concentrate
on a bit of opening and closing for now.
And I’ll tell you more about Save later.
So in order to save this project go to Backstage
View, click on Save As.
Save As brings up a Save As page.
And exactly what you see here will depend
on what Save As locations are available to
you.
I have SharePoint sites available to me.
I have a couple of OneDrive locations available
to me.
And I have of course the PC that I’m working
on.
Now depending on how your defaults are set
you will by default be offered one of the
available options.
On this occasion I’m not going to accept
my default of saving to a SharePoint task
list.
I’m going to save it to my PC.
And that’s what I want you to do as well
whenever you save files.
Now when I click on this PC I’ll normally
see a list of folders that are either default
folders or ones that I’ve used recently.
Now I don’t actually want to use any of
those folders so I’m actually going to the
bottom here and I’m going to browse to the
folder that I want.
Once I’ve used that folder, and that’s
the course file folder in my case, that will
appear on this Save As list under this PC
next time.
So I’m going to click on Browse and then
browse to the course file folder.
Now at the moment the course file folder is
empty as far as the Save As type that I’m
using is concerned.
And my default Save As type is set to MPP.
That should be your default Save As type as
well.
So all I need to do now is to give my project
file a name.
So the extension will be MPP and the name
I’m going to give it is SSI Wedding 01.
Click on Save.
Now when I’ve saved that file the file name
appears in the header of Microsoft Project
2016 at the top there to remind me of what
the name is.
And if I would now to save this or any other
project using the approach that I’ve just
taken.
So if I do again File, Save As and click on
this PC that course files folder now appears
in the list of Save As locations.
Now there’s a couple of important things
to note about these sort of lists of locations
and lists of files and so on.
And that is that as you work more and more
with Project 2016 obviously these lists are
going to tend to get longer and things will
start to drop off the bottom of the list.
Now there’s a little pin on the right here
and if you click that you can pin items to
the list.
I anticipate that I’m going to be saving
a lot of items to the course files folder.
I don’t want it to drop off the bottom of
any list so I’m going to pin it to this
list to make sure that it stays there.
There’s now a new category here of Pinned.
So if you’re going to be working with a
couple of folders, the course file folder
and the exercise file folder, you may well
want to pin them to this and any other list
that you finish up using.
So having saved that project to that folder
I’m now going to close it by clicking on
the Close button here and I now have Project
2016 open with no files open.
In a moment I’m going to look at some of
the options for opening that wedding project
again.
But just before I do let’s go to Project
Options, the Advanced page.
And I did mention earlier on that we would
be looking at some of these advanced options
as we go through the course.
There won’t be time to go through every
single thing but I will point out a few of
them as we go.
And I do suggest that from time to time you
take a browse through these options.
For example, on the Advanced page in the Display
section the first option, Show this number
of recent projects.
In that way you can control how many projects
appear in the Recent list.
And below that one of the options is Show
this number of unpinned recent folders.
So you have a number of options that you can
experiment with and set to your own requirements
there.
I’m not going to change my setting at the
moment.
But what I am going to do is to exit Project
altogether and sort of pretend it’s the
next day and come back in and see what happens
as I start up Project.
Well when I start up Project I can of course
see the wedding project in my recent projects
list.
But I’m not going to open that at the moment.
What I’m going to do is to start a new blank
project.
And whilst I’m working on my new blank project
I decide that I need to look at the wedding
project.
Now I don’t need to close this project.
I can have more than one project open at once.
So I’m going to go to File, Open, and of
course there in my Recent files list is the
wedding project.
I might choose to pin it to that list.
Remember what I pinned before was the folder
not the individual project.
Now I’m not going to pin this on this occasion
but I am going to select the wedding project,
open it now.
Obviously if I needed to use Browse or this
PC or go to any other location that’s fine.
And that gives me many options for opening
existing projects.
So I click on Wedding 01 and I’ve now got
two projects open.
There’s absolutely no problem with having
two or more projects open other than switching
between them and that’s what we’re going
to look at next.
There are a number of ways of switching between
open projects.
There are ways within Project and there are
ways within Windows as well.
Now the ways within Windows of switching between
open projects to some extent depend on whether
you’re using Windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 or 10.
One way is to use the well-known Alt-Tab way
of cycling through the running programs.
Another way, and this I’m going to demonstrate
in Windows 10, is if I move the mouse over
the Project icon on the Task Bar I can see
the two open projects.
And all I need to do is to click on the one
I want to work on and I’ll switch into that
project and then obviously switch back just
choose the other one.
Within Project itself the way of doing this
is if you go to the View Tab, in the Window
Group towards the right hand end one of the
options is Switch Windows.
And if you click there you’ll see a list
of the open projects.
And all you need to do is to select the one
that you want to work on and then you’ll
be taken into that one.
So there’s a couple of options there for
switching between open projects.
So by now you should have enough tools and
techniques to create a project, save it, close
it, open it again, work on more than one project
at a time.
And it’s time for you to do the first
course exercise.
That’s what I’m going to set you in the
next section
so
please join me
for that.