Microsoft Project for Mac OSX – is there really one?

Your organization just landed a new project, so now it’s time to create a project plan to manage the project timelines, milestones, and resources.

So now, the big question is “Is there a Microsoft Project for Mac OS X“?

I’ve been searching around if there is a version of Microsoft Project for Mac OS X, but it seems that many users in forums are saying there isn’t any.

Checking through Mactopia – Office 2008 for Mac from Microsoft, I don’t see anything mentioned about Microsoft Project.

The funny thing is that in order for a Mac to create a Gantt Chart, we need to use Excel. Read this article published on Mactopia on how to create a Gantt chart. This particular article led me to conclude there’s really no new version of Microsoft Project for Mac.

Luckily many 3rd party vendors see this as an opportunity to develop project planning software specifically for Mac users.

The following are a few that I know of. Feel free to try them all out to see which one best fits your requirements and budget.

OpenProj is a free and open-source project management solution meant to be a replacement for Microsoft Project and other commercial project solutions. OpenProj is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Mac it even opens existing Microsoft Project or Primavera files.

Merlin 2 is a leading professional project management software for Mac OS X. Merlin 2 is developed by project managers for project managers and it truly delivers in meeting your professional project-related requirements.

FastTrack Schedule 9 is an easy-to-use project management software for tracking, planning, and reporting project goals and milestones. FastTrack Schedule 9 is suitable for both experienced and first-time project managers as it helps teams to effectively and successfully manage projects.

RationalPlan (Download, affiliate) is a powerful project management software designed to help both project managers and teams create consistent project plans,  analyze workload and allocate resources, estimate projects’ costs, track work progress,  and manage budgets.

OmniPlan is a painless project management tool as it allows you to create logical, manageable project plans via Gantt charts, schedules, summaries, milestones, and critical paths. Break down the tasks needed to optimize resources,  streamline budgets and make your project a success.

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There you go, five (5) Microsoft Project alternatives for Mac OS X users. Happy trying!