Opening and closing summary tasks

When a bar chart view contains a summary task, you can open the summary group within that task by doing any of the following:

Double-clicking the summary task.
Clicking the button that appears at the left hand side of the Name column in the spreadsheet row that relates to the summary task.
Selecting the summary task from the chart hierarchy in the project view.
Selecting the summary task then clicking in the Hierarchy group on the Home tab.

You can open a summary group in a new tab by right-clicking its icon in the project view, then selecting Open in New Tab.

To close a summary group, do either of the following:

Double-click the summary task.
Click the button that appears at the left hand side of the Name column in the spreadsheet row that relates to the summary task.
Select the summary task, then click in the Hierarchy group on the Home tab.

Note that the plus and minus buttons do not appear in the Name column against summary tasks if the Include +/- button on summary name column check box is cleared on the View tab of the Options dialog.

You can choose to display different levels of the project hierarchy in the current view by expanding summary tasks up to a specific level. This is particularly useful if you structure your projects in a consistent, uniform way. You can choose to expand all of the summary tasks in the current view - including those that are contained within other summary tasks at any level, to expand all of the summary tasks in the current view up to a specific level, or to contract all of the top level summary tasks in the current view, showing the top level only of the visible project hierarchy.

When you select more than summary task in the project view to display their contents in the bar chart together, it is possible that a summary task may appear twice in the bar chart. This happens when you select a summary task itself as well as its parent in the project tree. When a summary task appears twice in the bar chart, you cannot open the summary task where it appears as part of the selected parent task; you can only view the summary group within the summary task by opening the summary task where it appears in the bar chart outside its parent task.