File opening and saving shortcuts

- Whether you work on one long project or juggle several at a time, you can open and save Project files using several handy shortcuts. Let's say you work on one project at a time. The easiest thing to do is to tell Project to open the last file that you worked on each time you launch the program. This works the same in Project 2010 and 2013. To set that option head up to the File tab and then down at the bottom of the list click Options to open up the Project Options dialog box.

You want to head to the Advanced category and the option that you want to turn on is this check box for "Open last file on startup." It does just what it says, so I'm going to turn that on and click OK. So here I have a project that I'm working on for months at a time. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to close Project by clicking the X up at the top right corner of the screen and now when I launch Project the next time watch what happens, the program launches and it opens up that same project file that I was working on, and now I can continue to work my magic with Project.

On the other hand, maybe you juggle several projects. In that case the Recent Projects list is your best friend. This works basically the same way in Project 2010 and 2013. We're going to head to the File tab and click Open. On the Open page Project automatically selects the Recent Projects category, so on the right side you have a list of your recent projects that you've opened. When you want to work on one of those projects all you have to do is click it.

Maybe you have lots of projects that you work on but you have a few favorites that you go back to time and time again. Well let's head to the File tab and go back to the Open screen. If you want to pin one of your favorite projects to the top of the Recent Projects list just point at it like I'm doing here. You'll notice that there's a horizontal pushpin at the right end of the screen. Just click that and it pops your project up to the top of the list, and it'll keep it there no matter how many projects you open.

Then when you want to open it, all you have to do is click it. Then when you're finally done with that project you can go back to the File tab, go to the Open page to unpin the project from the top of the Recent Projects list, point at the vertical pushpin and that takes it off the list and just drops it down below with the rest of the projects. I love keyboard shortcuts. I like to use Ctrl+O and Ctrl+S to open and save files. Now in Project 2010 these keyboard shortcuts work like they do in other programs.

Ctrl+O opens the Open dialog box so you can browse to the files that you want, and if you're saving a new file Ctrl+S opens the Save As dialog box. In Project 2013 it's a little bit different. I'm going to press Ctrl+O, notice that by default Ctrl+O takes you to the Open page of the Backstage view. Let's say that I want to use Ctrl+O to open the Open dialog box instead like it does in other programs. No problem, there's an option for that.

You want to head down to the bottom of the list on the left side of the screen and click Options, and now you want to go to the Save category. The check box "Don't show the Backstage "when opening or saving files" is the one that you want to turn on. Click OK to close the dialog box and now I'm going to press Ctrl+O again to show what this does. There you go, Ctrl+O takes you directly to the Open dialog box so you can open the file that you want. In this case I'm going to click Cancel and now I want to show you some Saving shortcuts.

Of course we're going to head back to the File tab and click Options one more time to open up the Project Options dialog box, and we're going to head back to the Save category. If you tend to work on your Project files for hours at a time and forget to save your work, it's a good idea to turn on the "Autosave "every so many minutes" check box. By default it's set to 10 minutes, which I find to be more of a distraction than anything else. I like to set this to 60 minutes, it's not too short, not too long.

I also like to leave the option, "Save active project only" set because that way the automatic Save only applies to the project that you're actively working on. That way if you have lots of files open you don't have to stop and think which ones you want to save and which ones you don't. By default Project turns on the "Prompt before saving" check box and you definitely want to leave that turned on. That way Project's going to ask you if you want to save a project file.

For example, maybe you're in a "what if" scenario and you don't want to save the project, you can tell it to wait and then maybe you'll be ready the next time it comes around and asks. There's one last option I want to point out and this one is new to Project 2013. It's "Save to computer by default." If you don't store your files in the Cloud, turn this one on. Now that I've got these set, I'm going to click OK and then show you how the "Save to computer by default" works.

I'm going to head to the File tab and this time choose Save As. Because I turned on the "Save to computer by default," Project automatically goes to the Computer category and shows me locations on my computer, which is where I store my files. If I had kept that check box turned off it would go to the OneDrive category and show me my Cloud locations instead. Those are several shortcuts you might find helpful.

Go ahead, give them a try and use the ones you like.