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Using the Backstage

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About this lesson

The backstage is a full-screen area that allows you to open, save, share, and print your project.

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2013, 2019/365.

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Using the Backstage.mpp.mpp
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Quick reference

Using the Backstage

The backstage is a full-screen area that allows you to open, save, share, and print your project. The backstage also provides access to project options, and allows you to configure the look-and-feel of Microsoft Project. Further, you can access the organizer to share views, tables, reports, and other elements from one project to another.

Steps

To access the backstage, click the File tab. Once you do this, there are menu items that appear along the left side of the backstage. When you click a menu item, the backstage will display a window you can interact with to do things like print, save, or share your project.

Create a new project and try some of these backstage activities:

  • Create a new project from an online template.
  • Print the project so it uses as little paper as possible.
  • Share your project via email with another person.
  • Export the project to Adobe PDF format.
  • Open, save, and close project files.
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  • 00:04 In this lesson, we're going to explore the Backstage.
  • 00:07 Actually, when you run Microsoft Project for the first time,
  • 00:10 you'll get this recent Backstage window.
  • 00:12 This allows you to open projects, create a blank project, or
  • 00:16 import projects from existing, from Excel, from SharePoint, or
  • 00:21 even select other sample project templates that Microsoft provides.
  • 00:25 In this example,
  • 00:26 we're going to choose the Software Development Plan project template.
  • 00:30 So double click on this file.
  • 00:34 To get to the Backstage,
  • 00:36 remember we click on the File tab at the top left hand side of project.
  • 00:40 Along the left we have menu items, and
  • 00:42 on the right hand side is the Backstage window.
  • 00:46 Right now, we're looking at the Info window.
  • 00:49 And this provides us with an ability to manage our
  • 00:52 accounts if we're using Microsoft Project Server.
  • 00:55 We're not using Project Server in this fundamentals course,
  • 00:59 so I'll skip over that.
  • 01:01 The organizer allows us to copy our favorite views,
  • 01:05 report settings from one project to another.
  • 01:08 I'll cover that in a future lesson.
  • 01:11 The New menu item allows us to create new projects very similar to that recent
  • 01:16 Backstage that we receive when we run Microsoft Project for the first time.
  • 01:22 Open, Save and Save As does what you'd expect,
  • 01:25 allows you to open a file and save files.
  • 01:28 Let's click on the Print Backstage menu item and take a look at this one.
  • 01:35 The print Backstage allows us to print our project and
  • 01:38 see how it's going to look before it's printed.
  • 01:42 So for example, over here on the bottom right-hand side of the screen,
  • 01:46 I can click these arrows to see what each page will look like.
  • 01:50 And I like to use this icon at the bottom right hand corner
  • 01:54 that says multiple pages.
  • 01:56 If you mouse over this box here that has the four boxes in it, just click on that.
  • 02:02 And now you can see every page your printer will print.
  • 02:07 If you have different paper types, you can change that here.
  • 02:13 And if you decide that maybe this is printing too much,
  • 02:17 you can also change the dates.
  • 02:21 And now I have it fitting on one page.
  • 02:24 There's also a page setup menu item here that allows me to be
  • 02:28 more granular in configuring how my project prints.
  • 02:33 So the print Backstage menu item is actually very powerful in that it allows
  • 02:38 us to see exactly what we're going to get before we waste our paper and
  • 02:42 print our project.
  • 02:44 For just one moment, I'm going to skip over Share and
  • 02:47 Export as these are the last two items I'm going to cover.
  • 02:50 Close allows us to simply close our project file.
  • 02:54 Account is a place where you can change your account information, any picture that
  • 02:59 might show up, but also you can change the background of project and the theme.
  • 03:05 So you can play around with these at your own leisure.
  • 03:07 We're not going to cover these in this lesson.
  • 03:10 One other item that we'll cover in another lesson is the Options menu item.
  • 03:15 I'm just going to click that.
  • 03:17 And you can see in this case, I get a pop up dialog.
  • 03:20 I don't actually receive the standard Backstage window.
  • 03:25 And here we have a whole other set of menus and settings and configurations for
  • 03:30 projects.
  • 03:30 And we'll cover some of these in a future lesson.
  • 03:33 We'll click Cancel for now.
  • 03:36 Let's go back to the File tab and click the Share menu item.
  • 03:42 The Share menu has two options.
  • 03:44 One is to synchronize with SharePoint and
  • 03:46 the other is to send a copy of your project via email.
  • 03:50 The sync with SharePoint is actually very interesting.
  • 03:53 Depending on which version you have, usually the pro or professional version,
  • 03:58 you can put your project up onto a SharePoint site and
  • 04:01 other people can modify it and send those changes back.
  • 04:04 If you have the Standard version,
  • 04:06 you can at least put your project up into SharePoint so other people can read it.
  • 04:11 I'm not going to cover SharePoint because that is
  • 04:14 a more advanced topic that I will not cover in this fundamentals course.
  • 04:18 Email opens up Outlook and sends the attachment via email.
  • 04:23 Now when you send the attachment via email,
  • 04:26 please note it's going to create what's called an MPP file.
  • 04:30 That's the standard file format for project and stands for
  • 04:34 a Microsoft Project Plan, MPP.
  • 04:36 Now when you send this file out to someone,
  • 04:39 it is not a synchronized version, what you're sending is a copy.
  • 04:44 So whenever you send this if someone else makes a change,
  • 04:47 you cannot synchronize it back to your original copy.
  • 04:50 There's also an Export option.
  • 04:53 And this allows you to create a PDF or XPS document.
  • 04:57 PDF is an Adobe format that's very popular and
  • 04:59 most people have what's called the Adobe Reader on their computer.
  • 05:03 XPS is a Microsoft format that not as many computers can read.
  • 05:08 So I'd suggest you use the PDF format.
  • 05:10 And when you do this, Microsoft Project has the built-in ability to create a PDF.
  • 05:15 And it basically provides you with a similar user interface
  • 05:19 as the print dialog.
  • 05:21 So this is basically how you get around the Backstage.
  • 05:25 As you can see, this is helpful for setting the configuration for
  • 05:31 your project which we'll cover later, creating new projects,
  • 05:36 saving your project, closing your projects, and
  • 05:41 also printing and sharing your project.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Using the Ribbon
05m:32s
Using Views and Tables
05m:59s

PMI, PMP, CAPM and PMBOK are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

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