Critical Activities in Red

You could create two "Views", identical apart from the redness of the critical path, you will then be able to switch between these two "Views".

Mark,
open a project and display the gantt chart; the open the format menu and play the gantt chart wizard to display the critical task bars in red
open Tools, Organize and copy the Gantt chart from your project (right hand column) to the Global.mpt template (left hand column)
that’s all, man
Alexandre

Well done Alexandre. Yes I had seen this before but it was about 18 months ago and this time I couldnt find it. Many thanks.

Mark,
you are welcome!
I am a MS Project (amongst others) certified trainer here in France; should you need/want a (good) training on the subject, I’d be happy to cross the Channel for a few days.
Just ask!
All the best
Alexandre

Mark,

be careful about over-writing the existing views, tables, reports etc that are in the global template with your modified versions of them. You will have no way to get back to the originals.

It is much neater to copy and re-name your version of the view, say "AAA Gantt Chart With Critical Red" and then get a fresh original Gantt Chart FROM the global template, then push your new view into the global template. Even better, you can store all special views in a template file of your own and leave the global as original.

Trevor,
I do not agree with your post:
a) it is very easy to get back to the original setup of MS Project views by using again and again the Gantt Chart Wizard,
b) it is also possible to over-write the views stored in the global.mpt template with "fresh" views
c) the global.mpt template was developped by MS in the early 90’s to make views, tables, filters, aso available for any project; a project template is used to store standard projects much more than standard formats.
Cheers
Alexandre

Alex,

a) if you use the wizard on any view, ie when in any view, you change the original formatting of that view. Usually, when you apply (the very few) options in the wizard to the Gantt Chart view, the changes are not severe. Same for using the wizard in/on other views, and you can use the wizard to reverse any of those changes. But the wizard doesn’t address anywhere near all of the possible format changes that can be made. Even the Page Setup, with footers etc, is stored as part of the view. It is possible to make lots of severe formatting and page setup changes to the Gantt Chart, or any other view, and you could make it a very ugly mess, or lose some of the original formatting or page setup which was serving some practical purpose. How do you get the original back, other than from a clean Global template?

You make some assumptions about the motivation at MS and the "intended" usage of the global template. Yes, it can be used to make available a standard set of views available for all projects. That standard set of views should consist of the clean originals as well as new, customised ones. There is no reason to even keep the new ones in the global template, and it is neater housekeeping to preserve the global template exactly as original, and keep all forms of customisation in separate templates.

There is no reason why a user defined template must only be used for entire "standard projects", and/or standard scope and WBS.

There is no reason why a user defined template cannot be used to store, and make available, customised formatting and page setups, ie views, as well as customised calendars, tables, fields, reports etc etc.

There good reasons for preserving the global exactly as original.

Trevor,
I will not argue.
What you are saying is exactly what I have been fighting against since the days of MS Project 3.0 and the Global.mpt file.
A good reason for NOT using templates to store formating is the HUGE space a MPP/MPT file takes on the hard disk.
A 100 task MS Project file takes more than 100 Kb, when the same in Sciforma Project Scheduler only needs 4 or 5 Kb
QED
All the best

I hope I am not arguing.
suum cuique. to each his own.
The question made me think about why I like it that way, but it is just one opinion.