Forum Discussion
How to display the date as month/year only
I have a long running project (think of 10+ years) and the smallest unit of planning is one month.
Today I am tasked to creating the first rough sketch of the project plan.
I need to create a gantt diagram as project overview where all milestones are labeled with the date.
The date shall be "month/year" without the day, e.g. 11/2028.
The display of the day completely obfuscates the overview.
Is MS Project capable to do this or do I have to look for a different planning software?
I have found many descriptions on how to create a custom field with a formula to get a custom date format. Unortunately I cannot find how to display this in the gantt diagram.
Just for reference, Project calculates all scheduling dates to the nearest minute regardless of how dates are displayed.
To answer your question, do this.
1. First create a custom Text field (e.g. Text1) with the following formula:
Text1=Month([Start]) & "/" & year([Start])
2. Go to Format > Bar Styles group > Format and in the lower part of the Format Bar Styles window select the "Text" tab and set it to the text field you customized. Set the text display the same for any other Gantt Bars where you want only the month and year to be shown.
You should see a display similar to this. Note, the Text1 field does not need to be added as a column in the view, it is shown for illustrative purposes only.
Hope this helps.
John
3 Replies
Just for reference, Project calculates all scheduling dates to the nearest minute regardless of how dates are displayed.
To answer your question, do this.
1. First create a custom Text field (e.g. Text1) with the following formula:
Text1=Month([Start]) & "/" & year([Start])
2. Go to Format > Bar Styles group > Format and in the lower part of the Format Bar Styles window select the "Text" tab and set it to the text field you customized. Set the text display the same for any other Gantt Bars where you want only the month and year to be shown.
You should see a display similar to this. Note, the Text1 field does not need to be added as a column in the view, it is shown for illustrative purposes only.
Hope this helps.
John
- Thank you. This works for me.
I just cant believe that this the way that MS has designed it.
It feels like an ugly workaround.
In Word and Excel it is so much simpler: select custom format, enter MM/YYYY and you are done.
Hello Microsoft, anyone listening? Time to get out of bed and do something for your customers...You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.
Keep in mind that Word and Excel are "generic" (open format) whereas Project is a strictly defined database format, although I do agree it would be nice to have more options for date format. The best way to get Microsoft to listen is to post your request to the Project UserChannel at:
https://microsoftproject.uservoice.com/forums/914203-project-for-the-webJohn
