What tasks did I change again?

Have you ever been in a team meeting, made a bunch of updates to your project plan, and then wanted to know later which tasks you had actually updated?  A coworker emailed me with this scenario today and I decided that the solution deserved a blog post.

There are 2 steps to this solution.

Step 1: In the meeting, before you start making updates to the project plan, insert the Flag1 column.  (If you are already using this column, any flag field will do.)  Then as you update a task, set the value to Yes.

Step 2: To now see all of the tasks that you have updated, go to Project - Filtered For: - More Filters - New.  Name the new filter, Tasks that have Changed.  Set the Field Name to Flag1, Test to equals, and Value to Yes.  Click OK to save the filter.  Now select the filter from the dialog and click Highlight.  This, instead of filtering out the tasks where flag1 isn't set to yes (which would have happened if you had clicked Apply), just highlights the tasks where flag1 is yes so you can still see them in relation to the rest of the project plan.

You can use the highlight filter anywhere that you would use a regular filter.  It is best used when you want to filter on a certain criteria but also want to be able to see the entire project plan.