Introduction
Occasionally, a delegate on a training course will ask how they can get the bars of their Gantt chart to change color when a particular resource is assigned to the task. This request has happened twice in the last week so I guess it must be time for me to write a tutorial.
From time to time I see Gantt charts that are very colourful and after a few moments of confusion I realise that the person who has put the plan together has used colour to highlight resources allocations rather than the more usual stuff like the critical path or tracking information. On close inspection of the chart, without fail, I find that the formatting has been applied on a task bar-by-task bar basis by double-clicking on the bar (or using Bar on the Formatting menu) and then selecting a different colour for the bar.
This is a far from satisfactory way of doing things and what my delegates want is for a bar to change colour automatically when a particular resource is assigned to it. This tutorial will teach you how.
We begin with a bit of Project Customization .