Duration bug (or user error) in MS Project 2003

[mikevanpmp]

All,

In MS Project I've got a task which I've scheduled to:
- Have a duration of 1 day,
- Start when a predeceding task is complete, and
- Finish as soon as possible.

When MS Project calculate the end-date, it is approximately 1 year
after the start date. To fix this, I have to delete the task, and start
from scratch. Has anyone got a better alternative?

In case this is user error, I've already had quite a bit of training in
MS Project, and I've read the friggin' manual.

v/r,

Mike Van, PMP

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Mike,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Have you set a Fiscal year? You might like to see FAQ Item: 1. Fiscal Year

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://www.mvps.org/project/

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[mikevanpmp]

Mike,

I did check the Fiscal year. The MS Project file I am working with is a
the result of someone else' hard work, not my own. As such, the first
thing I did was check to ensure the calendar, hours per day, etc were
correct. The issue appears to be that I cut the offensive rows from a
later calendar portion of the GANTT chart, and pasted them to an
earlier portion.

To fix the error, I had to set the begin date manually, then set the
duration to 0, and when resetting the duration to 1, the correct
end-date re-appeared. Then, I removed the calendar start-date and all
was good.

From my experience as a VB/Java/C++ developer, that kind of kludgey

work-around smells of an underlying logic error in the tool. I was
hoping that someone on this board could point me in the direction of a
better fix.

v/r,

Mike Van, PMP