Clearly and Simply

Microsoft Excel Project Calendar Template

A ready-to-use Microsoft Excel Template for a dynamic Project Calendar, displaying regular Project Meetings and Deadlines for one selected week 

As per the subtitle of this blog (see above), Clearly and Simply is about data analysis, modeling, simulation and data visualization.

If you are a long time reader of this blog (and I am aware there are only a handful), you know that – from time to time – I also post something about Project Management.

I already published posts here about

• interactive checklist templates (Microsoft Excel Check List Template and Microsoft Excel Check List Compilation)
• how to export tasks from Microsoft Project to Outlook
• how to import tasks from a Microsoft Project file into Excel
• how to create a Gantt Chart in Microsoft PowerPoint from a Microsoft Project file.

Following this tradition, today’s post provides another little piece out of my Project Management Toolbox: a ready-to-use, dynamic Project Calendar Template in Microsoft Excel. Of course, including the template for free download.

Microsoft Excel Check List Template

A Microsoft Excel template for a structured Checklist with the option to check and uncheck by double clicking

Unfortunately my blogging activities slowed down to a crawl during the last few months and I left you waiting for new posts far too long already.

Be assured that this site is not dead. I will revive the blog during the next weeks and I am already working on a couple of new articles.

For one of the planned next posts I needed a checklist template. There are tons of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word examples available for free.

However, I couldn’t find a checklist template I really liked. Formats are always easy to change, but I was particularly looking for a checklist providing a convenient way to change the status of the checklist items. Furthermore it should be easy to use and easy to maintain. Some of the templates I found simply expect to type in an X (or something similar) to check an item, some are working with data validation lists, some have form control checkboxes. The one that came closest to what I was looking for is provided by my good friend Daniel Ferry, the Excel Hero here: Excel Dynamic Checkmark. Already pretty close to what I was after, but since it did not fulfill all of my requirements, I decided to create my own.

Agreed, today’s post is a bit off topic regarding the focus of this blog. It has nothing to do with data analysis, data visualization or dashboards. However, a nice Excel checklist template is always a useful thing to have in the toolbox.

With today’s article I am trying to kill two birds with one stone: to show a sign of life and to share my little checklist template with you.

Export Microsoft Project Tasks to Outlook

Export tasks and milestones from your project plan to Outlook tasks, appointments or notes

Clearly and Simply claims to be a blog on “intelligent data analysis, modeling, simulation and visualization”, and most of the posts are indeed discussing these topics. From time to time, however, I intersperse a post on project management, since project management activities always come along with most of my projects to a greater or lesser extent.

I suppose this might be the case in your professional life as well. A couple of months ago I published a post on how to export a Gantt chart from Microsoft Project to Microsoft PowerPoint. This post was extremely well received by our readers. Thus, I thought publishing another article on how to export from mpp files to other Microsoft Office applications might do no harm.

Today’s post provides a very simple tool to export tasks or milestones from your Microsoft Project plan to Outlook, either as a task, an appointment or a note. As always, including the tool for free download.

Gantt Charts are learning to fly

How to export a Microsoft Project Gantt Chart to PowerPoint

The recent post Bring your tasks in a row showed a way of how to import a project plan from Microsoft Project into a preformatted Microsoft Excel template with ease. Today we are taking the opposite direction. This post provides a tool to export a project plan from Microsoft Project. This time however the target application is not Microsoft Excel. It is Microsoft PowerPoint. And I am not talking about a simple macro that copies the project plan as a picture and pastes it into a PowerPoint slide. The tool converts an mpp-file into a full editable Gantt chart in Microsoft PowerPoint with one single mouse click. On the fly.

What is not on paper has not been said

Monitor your project with an Action Point Register

„Action point register? What is an action point register? A to-do-list?”

Well, yes and no. Basically it is a to-do-list, however not for a single person but for a team or a project group. It helps the project manager to document, assign, schedule and track all action points and issues.

„Alright, it is a longer to-do-list and distributed among the team members. Who needs another Excel template for a to-do-list?”

I agree, it is really easy to create a simple to-do-list with Microsoft Excel within a couple of minutes and probably most of you have already done this. Even if you don’t want to create one, several websites and blogs are providing different free templates for to-do-lists / action point registers.

So why publish another one? Well, because I think this one is a bit more sophisticated. And it is quite in line with the post on importing Microsoft Project files into Microsoft Excel.