View project information without project

You mean, you don't have one of the greatest project management programs in the world installed on your computer? No problem. You have other options to view Project information without having Project installed on your computer. Let's look at some of these ways.

Note: Keep in mind that Project doesn't have a viewer program that enables you to open a project file on a computer that doesn't have Project installed.

What do you want to do?

View project information if you don't have any version of Project installed

View a Project file created in a later version of Project

View project information if you don't have any version of Project installed

If you don't have Project installed, consider the following options for viewing a project plan.

• Project Web Access    If your organization is using Microsoft Project Web App, you can ask the project manager to publish the project and then give you permission to view the project. Then you can view the project in Project Web App.

• Trial version    If you don't have Project Web App, and you cannot contact the file's creator, you can obtain a trial version of Project. You can then open the project using the trail version.

• Copy Picture    The person who created the project can use the Copy Picture feature to copy a .GIF image of the plan. The .GIF image can then be sent to you in email, printed out, or added to a Web page.

• Copy to another Office application    Project contains enhanced functionality for basic copying and pasting project information while retaining formatting and column heading information. The person who created the project can copy the information from Project and paste it into applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook. You can then view project information in those Office applications.

• Visual reports    The person who created the project can create a visual report that is designed for importing into and then viewing in either Excel or Visio.

• SharePoint    The person who created the report can save the report to a SharePoint site, without using Project Web App. You can then go to the SharePoint site to view and edit task and resource information associated with the Project. The project information that is edited on the SharePoint site will be copied back the original project automatically.

• Copy the Timeline view    The Timeline view in Project can be copied and pasted in an email message or in any Office application for a quick view of Project progress along a graphic timeline.

View a Project file created in a later version of Project

Project 2010 and all later versions use the same file format. For example, a project created in Project 2016 can be opened in Project 2010 without saving the project to a different format. See Opening Project MPP files from different versions for more information.