My task won't indent or outdent. What's happening?

If you are unable to indent or outdent your tasks:

• You may be trying to outdent a first-level task Tasks at the first outline level cannot be outdented. Instead, indent those tasks that you want to include as subtasks to the first-level summary task.

• You may be trying to move a task within a consolidated project When working with consolidated projects (multiple projects collected as subprojects within one master project), the tasks associated with specific subprojects cannot outdent beyond the level of the subproject.

• You may be trying to indent or outdent assignments, not tasks The Resource Usage and Task Usage views display task and resource assignments with indentations similar to those of subtasks. Although assignments may be shown or hidden along with subtasks, they cannot be indented or outdented.

• You may be working in a view that doesn't use the outline buttons The Indent and Outdent buttons work only when the Gantt Chart, Task Sheet, or Task Usage view is the active view. If you are using one of these views and the outline buttons don't work, make sure that your summary tasks are displayed.

  To display the summary tasks, follow the instructions in the Hide and show the project summary task topic.

• You may have your tasks sorted without retaining their outline structure If your tasks are currently sorted without their outline structure, the outline buttons aren't available.

  To keep the outline structure when sorting your tasks, click Sort on the View tab (or the Project menu in Project 2007), click Sort by, and then select the Keep outline structure check box.

• You may have your tasks grouped If the Group By box in the View tab in the Data section (found in the toolbar in Project 2007, see image below) is set to group your tasks, outlining is not available. The Show Subtasks and Hide Subtasks buttons to the left of the task name collapse and expand the grouped tasks, rather than the outline structure of the summary tasks and subtasks. To remove grouping, choose Group by > No Group.