Editing, Repositioning Legend Items, and Formatting the Legend

About the Legend

Groups of tasks and milestones that share an entry in the legend can have their color and shape modified in one simple operation.

This is a fast way of changing several tasks or milestones at once, and is an alternative to some of the other Manual Editing (Portal) methods discussed later.

The following steps show you how to edit, reposition legend items, and reformat the legend:

Editing Legend Items

1) To change the color and shape of an item in the legend, right click it so that the Edit Legend Item form appears, as shown below:

2) Change the color or shape of the legend item as previously described with the Color Chooser, the Marker Symbol dropdown button, and then click OK.

3) The legend item, and all associated tasks or milestones, in the graph will automatically be reformatted to match the change you just made.

4) You can also edit the name of the item in the legend. Changing the name in the legend will not change any underlying data in your Microsoft Project or Microsoft Excel plan.

Repositioning Legend Items

5) Items in the legend can also be repositioned by clicking the up and down arrows on the right hand side of the form.

Formatting the Legend

6) In addition to changing the format of individual items in the legend, you can also make adjustments to the overall format of the legend itself.

7) Most of these settings can be accessed by right clicking near the legend title so that the following context menu appears:

8) The context menu allows you to do the following:

a) Hide Legend: Clicking the Hide legend command will cause the legend to disappear. To retrieve the legend, go to the View tab and check the Legend checkbox in the Graphic Elements group or go to the Project-View Properties (PVP) form’s Legend tab and check the Show legend checkbox.

b) Unhide all items: With the legend visible, clicking this command will make all previously hidden legend items in the legend again visible in the legend.

c) Rebuild Legend: The Rebuild Legend command will cause the software to rebuild the legend from scratch, incorporating any changes that were made to specific tasks/milestones properties. This is normally not necessary, but can be used if you think that the legend has gotten out of sync with what is currently on the screen.

d) Edit legend title: This lets you make a change to the title of the legend as shown below:

e) Title font: This lets you make changes to the font of the legend title as shown below:

a) Item font: This lets you change the font of the legend items (as opposed to the legend title).

b) Background color: This lets you select the color of the legend background.

c) Order: Clicking the “Order” command will show an additional sub-context menu as shown below:

With the sub-menu for the “Order” command showing, you may select any of the four sub-commands as follows:

i) Bring to front: This puts the Legend box in front of all other shapes on the screen.

ii) Send to back: This puts the legend behind all other foreground shapes on the screen (but not behind background shapes).

iii) Bring forward: Selecting the “Bring forward” option steps the legend forward by one increment of “z-level”. This is not very useful.

iv) Send backward: This steps the legend backward by one “z-level”. This is not very useful.

3) You may use editing on individual legend items to activate the “No Fill” option for those tasks/milestones represented by a particular legend item. This is an efficient way to apply the “No Fill” feature to multiple tasks/milestones. To use the “No Fill” feature through the legend follow these steps:

a) Right-click the shape for the desired task/milestone.

b) Go to the “Color” window and click the drop down button to reveal the “Color Chooser” form with the “No Fill” check box as shown below:

c) When you check the “No Fill” check box the “Color Chooser” form will close.

d) Click “OK” on the “Edit Legend Item” form and the result is as shown below:

e) Further Note: Unchecking the “No Fill’ check box is a three step process described above in the “Changing Individual Task/Milestone Colors” group of this document.

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