Accessories

Warning - "Save as Web Page" removed
I previously used Microsoft Project 2003 heavily, but was dismayed to find out that the 2007 version removes the "Save as Web Page" feature that was present in the 2003 version. This feature was quite handy for a project administrator to manage a project and publish it for viewing by other interested parties.
Instead, the feature has been replaced by "Save as XML". Although Microsoft's Help claims that the XML format is "more flexible" -- which is true -- it is also true that this requires that the user program a style sheet to transform all the project tags into a readable format. Although this could be useful to users who need to process the data with other programs, it removes the easiest way to share your data. Note that there is no free viewer for Project the way there is for other Microsoft Office programs. Coincidentally, Microsoft sells an expensive Project Server which allows users to see web page versions if they pay per-user Client Access Licenses and upgrade to the expensive Professional version of Project.
XML could have been an addition alongside the HTML support. Instead, HTML export was removed, crippling this program's usefulness for anyone not willing to shell out thousands of dollars and install a Project Server.

Rough Start
I'm running on Vista. Unlike what is specified at the top of Amazon's page for Project, the platform for Project 2007 is NOT just XP. All Microsoft 2007 products are Vista compatible (or so I'm told). At any rate, Project works on my Vista machine.

Sort of. I've never used Project before, although I'm highly experienced with Excel, Word, Power Point, and other Micrsoft products. I've always had staff doing my cost-schedule engineering, but now I'm running my own company so I thought I'd give Project a go.

First, there is very little that is intuitive about this program. I just recently received my "Project 2007 for Dummies" book and am really glad I made that purchase, because I was ready to set fire to this product.

For example, where I work we have no Sat/Sun weekends (Afghanistan). But Project doesn't agree with that schedule. It was extremely frustrating to select a Saturday to start a task, and Project automatically changing it to Monday. It would be understandable if it gave you a prompt or a warning about working weekends, but instead it simply refused to allow you to pick a weekend day for a task.

It took me about an hour going through the Help Online thing to figure out how to make Project allow me to work on a Satruday. I was fully expecting to feel like an idiot and find some simple way to tell Project to ignore weekend constraints. But I found that doing so is actually a multi-step process (about 7 steps, few intuitive) to get Project to allow me to start work on the day I wanted. Ridiculous.

And the Help that comes with the software doesn't work. When I clicked on Help, it said it has to configure and install Help. So I waited for the task bar to go all the way across after several minutes, and then it required a reboot for the changes to take effect. After reboot, I started up the program fresh, clicked Help, and went through the same thing all over again. After the third time, I was spitting nails. Hence the need to go to on-line Help (not your first choice in Afghanistan).

You know, if there's one part of any software that should NOT be messed up, it's Help.

Bottom Line: Bugs; not intuitive at all. But it does seem to work mostly, and I acknowledge I'm a PRoject rookie. I did finally produce my simple schedule, hence the 3 stars and not 2 or 1.

Project 2003 works better
I have used pretty much every version of MS Project there has been over the last 10 years. This is the first version that I have had problems with.

First, let me talk about the good. This really does help with visualization of projects. Especially when making changes to an existing project. I really like that when you make a change it shows you the effects on other items.

Now the bad, printing schedules is broken. Anytime you change the scale, things look really bad. Text gets cut off and task bars don't scale propertly. I have corrsponded on MS forums and they agree that scaling doesn't work well. For me, this is a deal breaker.

I have also had problems with Project changing the constraint types on some pretty complex projects. This is simple enough to fix if you notice it, but it is truely annoying.

I have had none of these problems with MS Project 2003 and I still prefer MS Project to other scheduling options on the market.

Basically, I recommend buying Project 2003, at least until they work the bugs out of this one.