I'm new to MSProject and finding it a bit daunting. Our Director wants to be able to view all of our many projects at once. Is there any way to do this? I've tried a work-around by putting all projects as sub-projects in one project, but MSP really does not seem to like this--puts new tasks in strange places, moves existing ones around, etc. My guess is we're not using this program in the way that it was meant. I don't think we need something quite as powerful as Project, but Director likes 1) the Gantt chart aspect and 2) the fact that it's free with Office. Not sure if I'm explaining clearly, but is there any way to use Project for a bunch of separate projects, but to see the information all at once? Any advice, suggestions welcome. Thanks.

Short of a consolidated project (which is what you tried, I think) you cannot view consolidated information without Project Server.

I'm rather surprised to hear that the Director thinks Project is "free with Office". I don't know of any version of Microsoft Office that comes with Project for free.

Project has a fairly steep learning curve and I suggest a two to three day hands on course in order to better understand how it works. That way you can stop working against it and have Project work for you.

Thanks, Julie. I figured as much. I haven't been able to convince the Director of this on my own. Project doesn't seem terribly user-friendly, and I think it's much more than we need. Director really likes the Gantt chart feature. Some of the lower-end programs out there don't have that. And I probably misspoke about Project being free with Office. It's free to us, as our university IT provides it to us for free.

Project is really unlike any other Microsoft product. It looks like Excel but most certainly doesn't act like it.

If you are using Project 2013 or Project 2010 - you can set the schedule to manually scheduled tasks to be able to enter start dates and finish dates. However, don't link those manually scheduled tasks - or your dates will change.

See the link below for a step by step on creating a Gantt chart in Excel:

https://www.officetimeline.com/gantt-chart-excel

Visio also creates Gantt charts. So if your director is looking for the presentation but not calculation, consider Visio or Excel.