Resource Availability Legend Colors Disappear

By Collin Quiring

Microsoft support tells me that they are not taking bug reports on Project Server 2010 and 2013 and/or Project Web App (PWA) 2010 and 2013.  They also wanted me to use a client support ticket to try and resolve this but apparently this bug has been around a long time in previous versions and Microsoft is aware of it so a support ticket wasn’t an actual resolution.  Therefore, I share it here only to point it out and give you the few annoying workarounds that are available to you.  They are annoying only in that they shouldn’t have to be used – not that they don’t work for some user’s purposes.

Here is the problem.  When in the 2010 or 2013 version and in PWA in the Assignment Work by Project view in the Resource Availability screen the color coding from the legend disappears when you print (to file or printer).  Or, more appropriately, becomes blank or clear.

NOTE – I am talking about when you print from the browser and not from the ribbon.  The Print and Export to Excel in the ribbon do NOT display the graph when using the ribbon.

For example, this is what the graph and legend look like when in the view itself.  This view is fine and the legend works great.

So, now, the user wants to print this out or otherwise to a PDF or other file for distribution.    Unfortunately, when trying to do this the Legend becomes quite useless as it clears out and now the user has no idea which color belongs to which project.  It now looks like this:

Unfortunately, there is no Microsoft fix that I am aware of that will be coming out for this issue (it still exists in 2013).

Therefore, the user is now forced to a workaround.  The only workaround is to take a screenshot (Print Screen keyboard button, Snagit or Snipit or whatever other method) and put it into their document (as long as it is an editable document) that they are trying to send to other people.  And, that is why I said it was annoying earlier in this post – wouldn’t it be nice to hit the Print icon in the ribbon and have it all there (because we want the graph and data part as well)?  Or, at least use Print from the browser and have it work?  And, while we are at it, wouldn’t it be nice for the Export to Excel button have the graph as well?  So, the user now has to decide how they are going to get the image into the document they are using.  They can export to file in the first place and then reformat the document to allow space for the image of the graph and then go back to the image in PWA and screenshot in whatever method and then go back to their document and paste it in.

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