Calculate Date in Project Plan

[Keith]

I need help calculating Dates in Project where milestone events will be
repeated throughout the project.

As an example: I have a project plan to clean up all garages on my
street. The milestone event is the Street Address *3504 *and each task
will occur at a set number of days for each Street Address.

3504 is set to begin on *6/1/07*.
- Order Paint 3 week lead time *(5/11/07) = 6/1/07 - 21 days*
- Order Brooms 2 week lead time *(5/18/07) = 6/1/07 - 14 days*
- Order Mops 1 week lead time *(5/25/07) = 6/1/07 - 7 days*
And I want everything to *arrive at 3504 on 6/1/07*.

HOW DO I ENTER A FORMULA TO CALCULATE THE 5/11/07, 5/18/07 AND 5/25/07
DATES?[/B] THE PLAN CANNOT BE BUILT USING PREDECESSORS AS MANY EVENTS
WILL BE RUNNING CONCURRENT WITH THE START DATE BEING THE ONLY
PREDECESSOR.

NOW FOR THE TRICKY PART. . . THE PLAN SHOULD NOW BE UPDATED BY COPYING
ALL OF THE ROWS FROM 3504 TO THE NEW ADDRESSES 3507 WITH A START DATE
OF 7/1/07 AND EVENTUALLY 8217 WITH A START DATE OF 2/27/09. THE
ARRIVAL DATES SHOULD AUTO POPULATE FOR STREET ADDRESSES 3507 AND 8217
BY ONLY CHANGING THE START DATE.

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Keith

 

[John]

I need help calculating Dates in Project where milestone events will be
repeated throughout the project.

As an example: I have a project plan to clean up all garages on my
street. The milestone event is the Street Address *3504 *and each task
will occur at a set number of days for each Street Address.

3504 is set to begin on *6/1/07*.
- Order Paint 3 week lead time *(5/11/07) = 6/1/07 - 21 days*
- Order Brooms 2 week lead time *(5/18/07) = 6/1/07 - 14 days*
- Order Mops 1 week lead time *(5/25/07) = 6/1/07 - 7 days*
And I want everything to *arrive at 3504 on 6/1/07*.

HOW DO I ENTER A FORMULA TO CALCULATE THE 5/11/07, 5/18/07 AND 5/25/07
DATES?[/B] THE PLAN CANNOT BE BUILT USING PREDECESSORS AS MANY EVENTS
WILL BE RUNNING CONCURRENT WITH THE START DATE BEING THE ONLY
PREDECESSOR.

NOW FOR THE TRICKY PART. . . THE PLAN SHOULD NOW BE UPDATED BY COPYING
ALL OF THE ROWS FROM 3504 TO THE NEW ADDRESSES 3507 WITH A START DATE
OF 7/1/07 AND EVENTUALLY 8217 WITH A START DATE OF 2/27/09. THE
ARRIVAL DATES SHOULD AUTO POPULATE FOR STREET ADDRESSES 3507 AND 8217
BY ONLY CHANGING THE START DATE.

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Keith

Keith,
First of all, don't type in all caps - it is rude (analogous to
shouting) and it is difficult to read.

Second, why can't simple predecessors be used? If I set up the following
plan, it appears to give what you want.
ID Name Duration Start Predecessor
1 Start 3504 cleanup 0d 6/1/07
2 Order paint 0d 5/11/07 1FS-21ed
3 Order brooms 0d 5/18/07 1FS-14ed
4 Order maps 0d 5/25/07 1FS-7ed

John
Project MVP

 

[Jim Aksel]

What John said... Here is some additional help: Record a Macro the first
time you type the tasks. You could even assign it a key sequence such as
ctrl+Q.
Type it once.
Click on a blank line, ctrl+Q and all 4 of your tasks appear. Manually type
the start date for the next garage (oh, I can't believe I said that... keying
of a date violates nearly every scheduling commandment)

If you are resource limited and you assign a group to do each garage, then
you may run into complaints if 3509 Wisteria Lane has materials there but no
humans. No need to tie up your budget in advance.

So, rather than key a start date, link them as well. You could have a line 5
"Complete"
so task 6 would be FS to line 5. Line 6 is your new Start Cleanup 3506
task, etc.
This way you avoid keying dates, and all you have to do is create one link
for each garage and the schedule waterfalls nicely.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It's software; it's not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

I need help calculating Dates in Project where milestone events will be
repeated throughout the project.

As an example: I have a project plan to clean up all garages on my
street. The milestone event is the Street Address *3504 *and each task
will occur at a set number of days for each Street Address.

3504 is set to begin on *6/1/07*.
- Order Paint 3 week lead time *(5/11/07) = 6/1/07 - 21 days*
- Order Brooms 2 week lead time *(5/18/07) = 6/1/07 - 14 days*
- Order Mops 1 week lead time *(5/25/07) = 6/1/07 - 7 days*
And I want everything to *arrive at 3504 on 6/1/07*.

HOW DO I ENTER A FORMULA TO CALCULATE THE 5/11/07, 5/18/07 AND 5/25/07
DATES?[/B] THE PLAN CANNOT BE BUILT USING PREDECESSORS AS MANY EVENTS
WILL BE RUNNING CONCURRENT WITH THE START DATE BEING THE ONLY
PREDECESSOR.

NOW FOR THE TRICKY PART. . . THE PLAN SHOULD NOW BE UPDATED BY COPYING
ALL OF THE ROWS FROM 3504 TO THE NEW ADDRESSES 3507 WITH A START DATE
OF 7/1/07 AND EVENTUALLY 8217 WITH A START DATE OF 2/27/09. THE
ARRIVAL DATES SHOULD AUTO POPULATE FOR STREET ADDRESSES 3507 AND 8217
BY ONLY CHANGING THE START DATE.

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Keith

Keith,
First of all, don't type in all caps - it is rude (analogous to
shouting) and it is difficult to read.

Second, why can't simple predecessors be used? If I set up the following
plan, it appears to give what you want.
ID Name Duration Start Predecessor
1 Start 3504 cleanup 0d 6/1/07
2 Order paint 0d 5/11/07 1FS-21ed
3 Order brooms 0d 5/18/07 1FS-14ed
4 Order maps 0d 5/25/07 1FS-7ed

John
Project MVP

 

[Keith]

Thanks for the quick and great responses!
The formula (FS-#ed) John listed allowed me to accomplish the har
part, but Jim has taken me to the next level. I have about 500 task
which will need to be repeated for 250 separate milestones.

I read and searched quite a bit before posting as I knew you guys wer
way out of my league. Jim - on a curious note; any idea why my postin
where I *bolded *appeared in capitals for John, but it was not poste
that way nor does it appear that way when I view it on the web

 

[Jim Aksel]

Thank you for the kind feedback, glad to hear John & I were able to assist you.
As for bold font and ALL CAPS, I remain clueless. Your original post shows
in all caps for me too.

I use IE to access this site:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx and that is
where I read/post. I don't have the ability to change fonts using this setup
..... So "I dunno"

What happens on my posts is that it appears I hit the enter key far too
often... but I never do. Again, "I dunno" Glad you found the posts helpful,
that is why we volunteer our time.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Jim,

As an aside, have you tried using a newsreader like Outlook Express for your
newsgroup browsing? Newsreaders are much faster and more convenient for
browsing and answering posts.

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[John]

Thanks for the quick and great responses!
The formula (FS-#ed) John listed allowed me to accomplish the hard
part, but Jim has taken me to the next level. I have about 500 tasks
which will need to be repeated for 250 separate milestones.

I read and searched quite a bit before posting as I knew you guys were
way out of my league. Jim - on a curious note; any idea why my posting
where I *bolded *appeared in capitals for John, but it was not posted
that way nor does it appear that way when I view it on the web?

Keith,
I also use a newsreader - I'm Mac based so I use MT Newswatcher.
Occasionally I see posts in non-Western format but I've never seen
something in all caps that the user didn't enter that way. I would
suggest that in future posts, do not apply any font characteristics
(e.g. bold, italic, etc.) to the text.

With regard to using my suggested approach on many tasks, it may or may
not be worth it to automate the process with VBA. If it is a one-shot
type of thing, I might just go ahead and do it manually. Depending on
the tasks, multiple copy and paste might also work.

John
Project MVP

 

[Keith]

Thanks for the suggestion to use a newsreader, but my company has very
strict regulations for downloads and software installations. Most of
all, I appreciate the formula you provided to me. I am still working
on the Macro Jim suggested.

Just so you can see that I am not yelling, I have listed the link from
TechArena where I posted my original question.
http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=751232

 

[John]

Thanks for the suggestion to use a newsreader, but my company has very
strict regulations for downloads and software installations. Most of
all, I appreciate the formula you provided to me. I am still working
on the Macro Jim suggested.

Just so you can see that I am not yelling, I have listed the link from
TechArena where I posted my original question.
http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=751232

Keith,
You might want to go with Mike's suggestion and try Outlook Express -
it's part of MS Office. I don't use it so I can't give any pointers on
how to set it up. Regardless, I believe you when you tell us you did not
intentionally type your message in all caps. No harm, no foul.

Good luck with the macro approach. If you need any help in that area, we
are here to help.

John
Project MVP