Advanced Microsoft Project Filters

The help manual for MS Project is less then useful for deciphering how to do complex filters. It would be nice if they just addressed it like any other language syntax. Wildcards? Reserved words? Special Functions? Anyhow, below is a list fo some standard filters you may want to use in Project. If you look closely you’ll notice a few tricks to get around the inflexible nature of Project’s filter syntax. One trick is to use the IIF operator to evaluate a statement within a custom field formula. The formula sets the field’s value then the filter evaluates that value. Another trick is used for getting around Project’s oddball treatment of “Null” or “N/A” dates. To check for these dayes you use a built-in project function e.g. Projdatevalue(“NA”).

Cheers,

Trevor Lowing
Office Tech Support

Filter Name	Description	Flag Field	Flag Field Formula	Filter Text
Next Two Weeks	All work scheduled during the next two weeks.	Flag5	IIf(([Start]<([Status Date]+14) And ([% Complete]<100)) And ([Finish]>[Status Date]),”Yes”,”No”)	Flag5 equals Yes
Late Start	Activities that should have started but have not or have started but have not completed.	Flag6	IIf(([Start]<([Status Date]) And ([% Complete]=0)),”Yes”,”No”)	Flag6 equals Yes
Late Finish	Activities that should have finished but have not.	Flag7	IIf(([Finish]<([Status Date]) And ([% Complete]<100)),”Yes”,”No”)	Flag7 equals Yes
Future Actual Or Deadline	Activities where the actual complete date is in the future or a Deadline has been set.	Flag8	IIf((([Actual Start]>[Status Date]) And ([Actual Start]<>projdatevalue(“NA”)))Or (([Actual Finish]>[Status Date]) And ([Actual Start]<>projdatevalue(“NA”))) Or ([Deadline]<>projdatevalue(“NA”)) ,”Yes”,”No”)	Flag8 equals Yes
Logical Finish	Activities with no successors.			Summary equals No And Successors equals
Logical Start	Activities with no predecessors.			Summary equals No And Predecessors equals
Long-Duration	Activities with a duration greater than 40 days.			Summary equals No And Duration is greater than 40d
Negative Float	Activities with Total Slack less than zero.			Summary equals No And Total Slack is less than 0d
Summary-with-Pred-Links	Activities with predecessor links.			Summary equals Yes And Predecessors does not equal
Summary-with-Succ-Links	Activities with successor links.			Summary equals Yes And Sucessors does not equal
Constraint Not ASAP	Activities not constrained “as soon as possible”			Constraint Type does not equal As soon As Possible

Advertisement