How to Show Progress on a Summary Task

When you have a summary of tasks where some tasks are ahead of schedule and others are behind, it’s hard to tell if you’re ahead or behind overall. This is simply because summary tasks in Microsoft Project don’t show progress by default. However, it’s very easy to fix by following the steps below:

1. Place your cursor in a single cell anywhere on the left pane of the Gantt chart view.
2. Right-click in the right pane and select Bar Styles.
3. Press the Insert Row button.
4. Type Summary Progress for the Task Name.
5. On the Bars tab change the Shape to the bottom half selection (the fourth one down), change the Pattern to solid (the second one down), and change the Color to red.
6. Select Summary in the Show For… Task field.
7. Select Actual Start for the From field.
8. Select Complete Through for the To field.
9. Press OK

Now you can match up the progress summary to the Current Date line.