Actual finish driving new planned dates

[Hall]

I have a 500-task plan covering 6 months. The fields Start and Duration
specify the schedule and all tasks have specified predecessors (finish to
start, start early as possible).

As time goes by, the gap between actual dates and planned dates, as often
happens in a project, grows. This makes the plan less useful unless I play
around with the planned fields.

How do I use this tool so that when I enter a date in the field Actual
Finish, all incomplete successor tasks have their Start date recalculated?
MS Project does work this way, right?

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello Hall,

I suspect that you entered specific dates in the Start field. So you have a
lot of constaints such as "Start Not Earlier Than". You have to set your
tasks free : As Soon As Possible in the Advanced tag of the Task Information
dialog.
If you have 500 tasks... you would better do the following:
- Insert / Column / Constraint Type
- Select all the column
- Ctrl + Del

Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Hall,

There may be a small problem

"all incomplete successor tasks have their Start date recalculated" is not
completely true, that should read
"all unstarted successor tasks have their Start date recalculated"
To get to this, all you need is to verify that in Tools,Calculation,
Calculation is set to Automatic.

Also, what do you mean by "unless I play around with the planned fields"?
You never ever do that, Project does that. The Start field is a planned
field, and it is calculated by Project from predecessors, links and
constraints. From there on, Projectdoes the playingaround (again with
Calculationset to Automatic)

Does this help?



--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620