Automatically Color-code Milestones

Fig 1: MS Project will automatically format tasks such as milestones if the text style is defined

Philosophy of color-coding milestones

My basic philosophy with the schedule is to keep it simple: look but don't read. Which means that the 5-7 milestones (see blog post on Too Many Milestones) should visually stand out. I shouldn't have to look for 0-day duration tasks to identify when I'm looking at a milestone.

MS Project provides a nifty way of automatically formatting tasks (milestones, critical tasks, etc).

Steps to auto-format milestone tasks

1. Format > Text Styles (see fig. 1)
2. Items to Change: Milestone Tasks (see fig. 2)
3. Select the text color and background (I normally choose a lime green background that's bold)

Fig. 2: Select the task that you want formatted