MS Project 2010 Custom Gantt: Add dates to the bars

The project team has decided they want to see dates on their Gantt chart bars.  So how do you do?  Easy!  Here are the steps you take to change your Gantt in MS Project.  It is similarly done MS Project 2013, which I also used daily.  Here is a schedule with no dates on the bar chart.

To put dates on the Gantt we can start by adding them to the right side of the bars.

First right click on the Gantt > Bar Styles and make sure you have “Task” highlighted.  On the bottom section click on Text tab.  Once there next “Right” type Finish and click OK.

Once you click OK you will see the dates on the right of the bars:

If you want to take out the lines and arrows to have a a cleaner looking bar chart, you can right click on gantt > Layout  and make sure under Links change it to no arrows (first option).  Here you can also change the date format in your bar chart under Date Format.

Below you can see the changes I made to my Tasks and Milestones, plus I took off the lines and arrows.  I’m ready to submit my Gantt chart for a schedule presentation.  Look how pretty it looks….

Just by playing around with the settings in the two areas I pointed out today, you can change the settings on how your bar chart looks.  Hope that helps you on your journey of learning how to format in MS Project.