Task Names in Gantt - bleeds off the page

Rick Harris

I'm quite new to Smartsheet, and am really struggling with printing Gantt sheets.

I have a simple project with 27 tasks, running for 6 month duration.

But I can't find a way of printing the gantt without the task names being truncated (the labels that are in the Gantt part of the print itself.

I have tried removing the Task Name as a column, and reducing the view to Quarters instead of weeks. But that just makes the Gantt half a page wide!!

 

Surely there is an easy way to do this?

Atus Bartal

You can select what to see in gantt view, just go to Project Settings (little wheel in gantt view), then select Timeline Display on the left, and "Display label for" on the right.

Rick Harris

OK - that removes the label altogether. But I want to keep them in, just not have them bleeding off to the right.

Maybe the only way to do this is to create a short version of the task name in Comments and display that instead?

Rick Harris

As an aside, is there a way to show just Months in the timeline (zooming to Quarters is too small, but weeks is too big for one page)?

Atus Bartal

You can insert a new column with shorter task names and refer to that as Display Label. If you want to have only the first 15 digits of the original task name, just use the following formula in the new column:

 =LEFT([Task Name]5, 15)

This may solve your problem. 

 

Atus Bartal

I have the following zooming levels: days, weeks, months, quarters.  Isn't that enough?

Rick Harris

Thanks Atus - the shorter display label works ok

 

On the zooming, it's not so much the 4 options are not enough.

It's more that the forced combination of two periods (months and weeks) makes the chart too long. Quarters and months makes it only half page width. Ideally I want just months on their own.

 

But I will manage. :-)

 

Atus Bartal

OK, I understand and agree. The zooming-out narrows the bar to ca. 50% when switching  from day to week and from month to quarter, but only to ca. 20% when switching the view from month to week, which makes the whole gantt chart too narrow. 

There should be a two-week of half-month view as well.

I hope it can be regarded as an enhancement request 

JohnHinkle

The Gantt chart will sometimes cut off part of a label when you print. You can fix this by creating an additional row with a milestone task that takes place a week after your last task. This will extend the Gantt chart in the print and will not cut off your labels.