Where should you enter the department name in MS Project?

When working with resources in MS Project, you usually want to enter the department name somewhere. This enables you to create reports with work, tasks or costs broken down by department. Let me show you where you can enter the department name.

The following articles applies to MS Project Professional 2010 and higher, including Project 2013, 2016 and 2019.

Adding the department name: Two options

There are several fields you can use to store the department. From my point of view, the best one are the field Group in the Resource Sheet as well as using a custom text field which can be named Department.

Both options provide the same result, and the fields can be used in standard or custom reports.

Option 1: Group field in Resource Sheet

I normally use the “Group” field in the Resource Sheet:

You can use the Group field in the Resource Sheet to enter the department name.

This field doesn’t have any particular purpose. It just allows you to separate your resource pool into different groups. I think it’s perfect for the department code or name. And because it’s a standard field, you won’t have any trouble using it in Microsoft Project’s standard reports.

See, I just created a work report which shows the departments:

MS Project now shows department name in field Group

Option 2: Custom field in Resource Sheet

The other option, which works equally well, uses a custom field in the Resource Sheet. You add a custom text field and change its name to Department. Use this option if you are using the Group field for another purpose.

To add the custom field that will store the department name, do the following steps:

Click Add new column:

MS Project: Add new column

Choose one of the Text fields and go to the field settings:

Display text field to store the department code

Rename the field to ‘Department’ and press OK:

Change column title

Now you can enter the departments into the new column:

The department name can be put into a custom field in the Resource Sheet of Microsoft Project

You can also report on this field, even though we have used a custom field for the department code:

MS Project report which includes the department name

Voilà! Very easy.

Now you now where to enter the department name in MS Project.

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Author

  • Adrian Neumeyer

    Hi! I'm Adrian, former Senior IT Project Manager and founder of Tactical Project Manager. I created the site to help you become an excellent project leader and manage intense projects with success!

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