It sounds like what you are calling "tasks" are really summary tasks - they
are in bold and have sub-tasks indented underneath them, right? The real
tasks are the sub-tasks and that's where all the work takes place. Most of
the properties of summary tasks are calculated values only and things like
their start, end, and duration cannot be edited directly. The summary task
is complete when all of its subtasks are complete and not before. The start
and end of a summary are determined by the start of the earliest subtask and
the finish of the latest ending subtask.
