How to Audit Predecessor and Successor Relationships in Project Plan?

[mark]

I have a 400 line project plan i've spent literally weeks
painstakingly manually adjusting and checking, rechecking predecessor
relationships. I am familiar with and use frequently the Excel "AUDIT"
functions which allow me to quicky find where a cell has been used, or
which other cells use the current cell. This function would be a very
handy way to validate a project plan. Manually scrolling up and down,
expanding and contracting summary tasks looking at task numbers to
validate 5 predecessors is both cumbersome and very error prone. It
would be handy to select a task and click 'show predecessor' and have
all direct predecessors highlighted, or selected, or put into a text
file for a report.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm using project 2003.

 

[JulieS]

I have a 400 line project plan i've spent literally weeks
painstakingly manually adjusting and checking, rechecking
predecessor
relationships. I am familiar with and use frequently the Excel
"AUDIT"
functions which allow me to quicky find where a cell has been used,
or
which other cells use the current cell. This function would be a
very
handy way to validate a project plan. Manually scrolling up and
down,
expanding and contracting summary tasks looking at task numbers to
validate 5 predecessors is both cumbersome and very error prone. It
would be handy to select a task and click 'show predecessor' and
have
all direct predecessors highlighted, or selected, or put into a text
file for a report.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm using project 2003.

Hello Mark,

A couple of suggestions that may get you close.

1) You can use a split screen view (Window > Split) and show the
relationship diagram in the lower pane. This will show you
graphically the predecessors and successors of the task selected in
the top pane.

2) In the split screen view, display the Task Form, and format the
task form to show Predecessor and Successors. That view is not a
graphic view, but does allow you to change predecessor/successors as
well as modify the link type and add lag or lead.

3) Jack Dahlgren (MVP) also made available some sample VBA code to
trace predecessors and successors. Jack's macro page is:
http://masamiki.com/project/macros.htm

See the "Trace" macro.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

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

 

[Jim Aksel]

Although we occassionally use the network diagram view for link tracing, we
have found a companion product to MS Project call PERT CHART EXPERT, from
http://www.criticaltools.com/ The product is quite flexible and is an add on
for MS Project.

You can read more about in on their website. Additionally, the product is
listed as a companion product on the website below.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

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