Hello again and welcome back to our course on Project 2016.
In this section I’m going to look at using Project 2016 using a touch screen device in
a little bit more detail.
If you don’t use a touch device and have no desire or need to use a touch device you
can pretty much ignore this section, skip straight on to the next one.
Now Touch Mode in Project 2016 is an interesting thing in a way because it is supported and
you can do a lot of things using a touch device in Project 2016.
But my feeling is that some things don’t really lend themselves very well to the use
of touch.
But that is to some extent a personal opinion and if you’re using a touch device with
Project 2016 you may find that you can do pretty much everything you need to do using
touch.
Now the first thing I need to say is that with Microsoft products and particularly Microsoft
Office related products nowadays there do tend to be two or more versions of various
products.
And when I’m looking at the use of touch here and in particular in relation to Project
I’m talking about touch as it’s used on a desktop product.
And Microsoft themselves still say that their desktop products are intended for use and
are optimized for use with mouse and keyboard.
So they’re recommended way of using Project 2016 is still mouse and keyboard.
Having said that, as I say, if you want to use a touch device or need to use a touch
device that’s really what I’m going to do in this section.
I’m going to give you a pretty quick overview of the key points you need to be aware of.
Now before I demonstrate a bit of use of touch let me refer you to a document.
Now as usual this may change between the time that I record this and the time that you work
your way through it.
But if you go to the Office.com site there is a particular page there that explains how
to turn Touch Mode on or off.
Now I’ve already shown you how to do that.
I’m not going to go through it again.
But towards the bottom of that page there is a section, More Touch Tips, that gives
a link to the Office Touch Guide.
And if you go to the Office Touch Guide it actually refers to Windows 8 here and of course
I’m running here on Windows 10.
And this Office Touch Guide really relates to Office 2013, not 2016.
But pretty much what is here is still totally relevant to what we’re doing in Project
2016.
So it explains tap and pinch and stretch and slide.
Now you may be very familiar with all of these things and you may be familiar with them in
relation to Office products.
But if you’ve got any doubts or uncertainties I suggest you have a look through those because
it will tell you a lot about general aspects of using touch with a Microsoft Office desktop
product.
Now there are specifics there in relation to Excel and PowerPoint but just stop if you
like at the end of the general points, working with shapes and objects, and I think you may
find this document a pretty useful introduction to the use of touch that you can extend into
your use of it with Project 2016.
So let me do a little bit of work on a project using touch.
I’ve started that project.
I’m just going to use my fingertips from now on.
I already have the Touch/Mouse Mode button visible on the Quick Access Toolbar.
So I’m going to tap on the dropdown and I’m going to choose Touch Mode.
Now as you saw earlier when I go into Touch Mode everything is spaced out more.
It certainly makes it easier to use with my fingers.
And also as I mentioned earlier depending on which tab on the Ribbon you’re using
you may find that you get a few less commands shown.
And this will of course depend on the size and resolution of your screen, etcetera.
Now when it comes to adding details of a task, in theory all I have to do, for instance,
is to tap here in the Task Name field and depending on how my system is setup I may
automatically get an onscreen keyboard or I may need to invoke a keyboard myself.
Now in this case I’m going to invoke the keyboard by tapping on the keyboard down here
on my Task Bar towards the bottom right, up comes my keyboard.
Now I’m going to start to type.
When I’ve finished if I press the Enter key it’ll take me down to the next task.
So far so good.
Let me put in a second task.
Now whatever point I finish using the keyboard of course I can close it again.
Let me go back to one of those tasks, tap it to select it.
Note how in the case of using touch the selection marker has those two little circles on the
corners.
This enables me to extend the selection.
For instance in this case I’m going to select the bottom right hand handle there and drag
it down so that I’ve got both of those tasks or their task names anyway, selected.
So I’ve now extended that selection to those two tasks.
Now let’s suppose that I want to do one of the things that I did earlier on.
I want to make those two bold.
All I need to do is to tap on the Bold command in the Font Group on the Task Tab on the Ribbon.
Now those names are bold.
If I want to do something a little bit more sophisticated shall we say, what I showed
you earlier on when we were using mouse and keyboard was how to a right click to get a
contextual menu.
Well in the case of touch that’s a case of tap and hold.
So you tap and then when you get the rectangle around the point where you’ve tapped you
release in order to see the contextual menu.
Now in this case you may say well what contextual menu?
All I can see is a mini toolbar.
In fact it’s almost a maxi toolbar really.
It’s a lot bigger than the mini toolbars that we saw before.
Now in fact it is a mini toolbar.
It’s one that’s optimized for touch.
And the contextual menu actually hangs off the right hand end of that mini toolbar.
So if I tap on the little arrow at the right hand end there is my contextual menu.
So there I’ve covered the basics of using touch.
Clearly a lot of the other aspects of using touch will come as you learn more and more
about Project 2016.
And I will point out key aspects of using touch where they’re appropriate or significantly
different from the way that you would do things using mouse and keyboard.
But the points that I’ve demonstrated here already are going to be some of the key points
that you need to be aware of if you’re using a touch device.
Let me just demonstrate one other thing.
Again as a sort of general example.
Let me just tap somewhere else to remove the contextual menu and the mini toolbar that
we had there.
You saw a couple of sections ago how to use these Zoom Slider.
Well if you’re using touch you can also do things like zooming the time scale with
your fingers using pinch and stretch.
So let me do a bit of pinch and stretch on the right there.
So I’m not using the zoom slider.
But interestingly note that as I do that with my fingers the zoom slider moves in response
as well.
So these tools all integrate with each other.
And in many I think a good way to think of using touch with Project 2016 is that it’s
an additional way of doing things rather than necessarily an alternative way.
And if you’re using a touch device and you become comfortable with it it can be quite
convenient in some situations.
On the other hand if I wanted to enter a duration for Task 1 I have quite a bit of trouble with
my fingers actually using those tiny little roller controls on the right there.
You may have smaller fingers than me or a bigger screen.
With a bit of practice I can just about do it.
But I do prefer to just click on those rollers with the mouse.
That’s it for this section.
I’ll see you in
the next one.