You can sort tasks in your project schedule to organize the information in your project in a way that helps you focus on particular aspects of the project. In 6, you can read about establishing priorities for tasks before you level the project to resolve resource conflicts. The priorities you set identify for Project the order it should use to select tasks to delay or to split. After you set priorities, but before you level a project, you can sort the tasks in Priority order to see the tasks Project is most likely to select to level in any given phase; 4-13 shows a project’s Task Sheet view sorted in Priority order; notice that the Task ID numbers no longer appear in order from lowest to highest, and Project sorts the tasks by default from highest priority number to lowest priority number within each summary task heading.
In the leveling scenario, Project delays tasks with lower priority numbers before it delays tasks with higher priority numbers. You might, though, prefer to sort from lowest to highest instead of from highest to lowest. Or you might dream up your own way in which you want to sort tasks. To make these kinds of changes, on the Project menu, point to Sort. From the submenu that appears, you can select one of the more typical sorts. Or to control sort order or select some field not shown on the submenu, click Sort By. Project displays the Sort dialog box (see 4-14), where you can control sort order and select fields on which to sort your project.
If you want to sort tasks by Priority order, regardless of position within summary tasks in a project, clear the Keep Outline Structure check box—you might want to try this approach for the Priority sorting example. To make the new sort order permanent, select Permanently Renumber Tasks; when you select this option, project reassigns Task ID numbers according to sorted position. Most of the time, though, you don’t want to make the sort order permanent.