Customizing activity table column headers in Primavera P6 comes in handy if you are submitting your schedule to stakeholders for review? You’ll want to edit and customize your activity table column titles for to create the best presentation.
The appearance of your project schedule is important for favorable stakeholder reviews. And expectations are that column headers have the proper titles and suitable fonts. But customizing the activity table column headers in Primavera P6 Professional is not as straightforward as one would suppose.
This article shows a quick tip to customize activity table column headers in Primavera P6 Professional.
Schedulers commonly look to present the activity table alongside the Gantt chart. But tailor-making the activity table column headers in Primavera P6 Professional is not always obvious. Let’s take a look.
We have in Figure 1 our demonstration project.
Figure 1
This figure represents a standard activity table and Gantt chart report. This project schedule also includes the budget. The column headers for the budget in this schedule are standard titles and the default in Primavera P6 Professional. Suppose we want to personalize an activity table column header, such as the Budgeted Non-labor Cost column title? To change column heading titles proceed and right click anywhere on the column headers or activity table and choose columns from the popup menu, Figure 2.
Figure 2
This brings up the columns dialog, Figure 3.
Figure 3
Select the column header to adjust, e.g. Budgeted Non-labor Cost, and click edit column, again, Figure 3. In the edit column dialog enter a new title, e.g. Fixed Price Contract, and click OK, Figure 4.
Figure 4
Note the updated title, Figure 5, and select OK again.
Figure 5
Figure 6 displays the activity table and our adjusted title.
Figure 6
Okay, that was actually somewhat straightforward, but good to know. Changing the font of the activity table column headers is somewhat less intuitive. This time right clicking on the column headers or activity table takes you down the wrong path. No, instead, you must right click anywhere on the Gantt chart and select Timescale from the popup menu, Figure 7.
Figure 7
The timescale dialog appears, Figure 8.
Figure 8
Click the font & color button, again, Figure 8. Select your desired font, font style, and size, Figure 9.
Figure 9
We choose the Book Antiqua font for demonstration. The final schedule is displayed in Figure 10.
Figure 10
With our selected Book Antiqua font it is easy to see the font updates to our activity table column headers and the timescale year, month, and week labels. The maximum number of rows in a header is 3 and you can also left, center or right justify the text in columns to taste, so you can make it look just how you want it to.
Summary
There’s nothing particularly mysterious here, but it’s good to know how to customize column headers in Primavera P6. And, it might spare you last minute frustration as you rush to send your schedule to the printers for stakeholder review. Here you can read a more comprehensive Primavera P6 Professional article on Changing Header and Legend Fonts in Primavera P6.