Welcome to the Ultimate Learning Guide to Microsoft Office Project 2007. You selected the right book if you seek a complete learning experience and reference manual for managing projects using the Microsoft Office Project 2007 desktop application. Our goal in writing this book is to teach you how to use the software effectively. We take a systematic approach to the topical ordering which follows the Project Management Institute (PMI) standard. The first 12 modules teach you foundational skills by following the project life cycle. In these modules, you learn how to define a new project, plan your project with tasks, resources, and assignments, analyze the Critical Path, baseline your project, enter actual progress, analyze variance, revise your project, report project progress, and then close out the project. The next 10 modules teach you advanced techniques for using Microsoft Office Project 2007. You learn in-depth knowledge about standard and custom Fields, Calendars, scheduling, costing, Critical Path analysis, managing risks, and exchanging project data with other applications. You learn how to locate and level overallocated resources, how to create and use a shared Resource Pool file and a master project, and how to record and write macros in VBA. Throughout each module, we provide a generous amount of Notes, Warnings, and Best Practices. Notes call your attention to important additional information about a subject. Warnings help you to avoid the most common problems experienced by others and Best Practices provide tips for using the tool based on our field experience. After reading this book, we believe that you will be much more effective using Microsoft Office Project 2007. Download the sample files from the official book site and work your way through the hands-on lessons in each module. By the time you complete the lessons, you'll be an expert too!