Not too long ago, I accidentally hid the “Task Name” column in a Microsoft Project plan. It wasn’t as obvious as I thought it would be to restore or reinsert that critical column. Here are some options for you if you find yourself in the same situation.

Task Name is actually Name

I’ve been using Microsoft Project for awhile, but I’ve never really given much consideration to the implementation of the “Task Name” column. The most important thing I learned from mistakenly hiding this column is that the “Task Name” column is actually implemented as “Name”. The title of the column is the familiar “Task Name”. I have just simply never noticed or thought about it before I accidentally hid the column.

Let me clarify with a visual.

Imagine you’re working on a Microsoft Project plan and accidentally hide the Task Name column. If you try to use the Insert Column feature, and search for “Task Name”, you won’t find it.

That’s because the column name is actually “Name” – it’s title is “Task Name”. I discovered this by starting a new project and hovering over the default “Task Name” column. If you do the same, you’ll see that the column is “Task Name (Name)”:

So, if you want to unhide (restore/re-insert) the Task Name column, you actually need to choose “Name” from the Insert Column options:

You’ll see that you have chosen correctly when the values you may have thought were lost for good are restored. Also, take note in this video that I use the Field Settings option to make the final update and restore the Title of the field. That is, “Task Name”:

Thanks for reading.

Categories: Business, Microsoft Project

Tags: Microsoft Project, Office