How to customize multiple timeline objects simultaneously

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Overview 

To help you create beautiful project visuals even faster, Office Timeline Online enables you to customize and style multiple objects on your graphic at the same time. There are two ways you can do this in Timeline View, and we’ll explain both in the short guide below: 

 

A)  Multiple Selection

Multiple selection is a quick and efficient way to style your timeline if you wish to apply a specific property (color, size, shape, etc.) to a number of chosen items simultaneously. Here’s how it works:

  1. Hold Shift or Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) and click all items you wish to customize to select them. Make sure to include only items of the same type (only task bars, only milestone dates, etc.). If you take a quick look at the image below, you’ll see we’ve selected tasks #3 and #4 from the first Swimlane, also tasks #3 and #5 from the second Swimlane – the ones marked by red borders.multiple-selection.png

  2. With the items selected, use the intuitive Style Pane on the right to customize them. Any changes you make will instantly apply to the whole selection.customize-selection-from-the-style-pane.png

 

B) Apply to All

With large, detailed timelines that have many data points, using multiple selection for mass customization might become a little cumbersome, especially if you wish to apply the same styling options to all objects of the same type. In this situation, you may want to use Office Timeline’s Apply to all functionality.

 

  1. In Timeline View, select one of the timeline elements you wish to customize, and then change its appearance using the Style Pane. In the image below, you can see we've selected the "Beta Release" milestone shape and styled it as a large orange star.

    customized-milestone-style-pane.png

  2. When done customizing, click on Apply to all at the bottom of the styling section corresponding to your selected item, and then choose the properties you want to apply to the rest of the items. 

    apply-style-to-all-milestones.png

  3. Office Timeline Online will instantly apply the selected customizations to all similar timeline elements.after-styling-milestones.png

Quick tips:

  • When using Apply to all on elements inside Swimlanes, you have the option to transfer your styling choices to only to the similar items in the current lane, or to ALL lanes on your timeline.  Simply tick or untick the "This swimlane only" box depending on your needs:
  • Similarly, when the item selected is placed directly on the timescale, you also have the option to exclude or include all similar items within the lanes you may have on your visual.

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