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Microsoft Project, Project planning, Templates and Advice

Essential Microsoft Project: The 20% You Need to Know
  • Concise, focused guide that cuts through the clutter
  • Step-by-step instructions for creating a project plan in under a day
  • Master essential skills like work breakdowns and task sequencing
  • Real-world troubleshooting for 20 common scheduling challenges
  • Rapidly get up to speed if you're new to Microsoft Project
  • Includes glossary, support resources, and sample plans
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Microsoft Project Filters

by | reviewed 10/08/2023

Using filters to sort your MS project plan

Microsoft Project has a large number of useful pre-set filters, which enable you to focus on particular aspects of your plan. For example, unstarted tasks or overallocated resources.

Steps to filter your project

By default Microsoft Projects filters by All Tasks. To change the filter go to the Project menu Project > Filtered for:

You will see a list of commonly used filters. You can filter by pretty much anything, but I find the Critical and Using Resource filters most useful. Critical shows tasks on the Critical Path and Using resource enables you to view just the tasks allocated to a particular resource. Simply one of the top level filters to apply it to your plan.

Adding more filters in Microsoft Project

If you can't find the filter you need view the full list by going to Project > Filtered for: > More filters

Note that the lists of filters are grouped into those that apply to Tasks and those that apply to resources. Use the radio button to toggle between them.

Click Apply to see the filter in action!

Apply a custom filter to your project Common mistakes & Problemsresources Custom filters - how to create custom filters

Read more guides on using Microsoft Project