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We are pleased to share that we’ve added the ability to copy projects in Microsoft Project for the web.  We built this feature to address your feedback to allow you to reuse projects and repeat workflows. With Copy Project, you can now easily duplicate projects to get started even faster. 

Copy existing projects

It takes a lot of time to build the perfect project plan. This is especially true when a project includes a lot of tasks or are part of a repeated process.  Manually recreating projects can be tedious and takes time away from actually doing the work.  With copy project, you can now create a new project by duplicating an existing one.  From the project, you can click on the title of the project to open up the details pane. From there, you can select “Copy project” from under the “…” menu.

 

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Click on the title of the project to open the project’s details pane

 

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Click on the “…” from the project’s details pane to open up the drop-down

 

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Click on “Copy project”

 

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Your new project will be created with the same original project name with “- Copy” added to it so you can easily track the copied project. You can update the name of your newly copied project through the Project Details Pane.

 

The overall project structure and tasks get copied over.  Copying a project does not copy over task assignments or the connected O365 group. However, you can always re-assign the project to the same group (or a different one!).  Tasks are also reset to 0% complete, so you can start your new project with a clean slate.

 

Tips & Tricks

Getting started with your new project: Don’t forget to rename your project in the project’s details pane! You can also share this newly copied project to a new or existing group, by clicking on “Group members” in the top right corner, so you and your team can quickly get working on the new project.

 

Moving your project dates: When you copy a project, the dates will copy over – and you may end up with a lot of “late” tasks! To quickly adjust the project to your new deadlines, you can update the Start Date of the project to push all of the tasks out. That way, you keep the relative dates, durations, and dependencies of all the tasks.

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Update the Project Start Date through the Project Details Pane to change the period of your project.

 

Templatizing your projects: You can deactivate a project and use it as a template, so that others can reuse the project but not make edits to it. You can deactivate a project through the Dynamics interface, which will make the project read-only.

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First, go to the Dynamics app via the O365 Waffle 

 

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Select the “Project” module, where you will see a list of your projects – select the project you’d like to deactivate.  

 

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Once you select your project that you want to deactivate, you can click the “Deactivate” button. 

 

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In the Project for the web interface, you will see that this project is not editable, but can be copied. You can now use this as a non-editable template!

Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback on the Copy Project experience, please let us know! We love hearing from you, so please continue to tell us how we can improve your Project experience by commenting directly on this post, through the “Feedback” button in the product, or UserVoice for Project for the web.  We read every submission and try to respond as needed — be sure to provide an email address so we can reach out to you for further

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.