MS prj 2000 Gantt chart: Drag right ege of bar, weird snap

[Paul]

When I drag the right edge of a bar, a yellow popup box shows the end
date changing as I'm dragging. I let go at (say) Aug 6, but the
resulting bar ends at Aug 7 four times out of five. How can I have
the bar reflect the end date of the yellow box when I let go? Why
doesn't it?

 

[John]

When I drag the right edge of a bar, a yellow popup box shows the end
date changing as I'm dragging. I let go at (say) Aug 6, but the
resulting bar ends at Aug 7 four times out of five. How can I have
the bar reflect the end date of the yellow box when I let go? Why
doesn't it?

Paul,
Project is working calendar savy. In other words given the working
calendar, Project's scheduling wizard will alert the user if he/she
tries to set a task start or finish date that is on a non-working (e.g.
weekend or holiday).

However, given the date in your example (i.e. 8/6/2008 is a Wednesday),
the difference is probably due to mouse resolution. If you want precise
control of a date, you should enter it into the appropriate date field
directly.

Now a word of caution. Users should NOT be entering dates directly into
the Start and Finish fields of Project. Doing so sets a constraint on
the task and effectively defeats Project's scheduling algorithm.
Schedule dates in Project are determined by the project start date, task
estimated duration, and links between tasks. In a few isolated cases a
fixed start date may be necessary. Once a project has started and
adjustments need to be made (e.g. delays), changes should be made to the
Duration field. If the actual start and/or finish of a task is different
from the original estimate, that date should be entered into the Actual
Start and Actual Finish fields. Project will then adjust the scheduled
start and finish to agree with what really happened.

John
Project MVP

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Paul,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Can't say, but that is not a particularly good technique as it is inaccurate
as you've found out. Don't fiddle with dates, just enter the new Duration
and Project will calculate it for you as it's designed to do.

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

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials

 

[Paul]

Paul,
Project is working calendar savy. In other words given the working
calendar, Project's scheduling wizard will alert the user if he/she
tries to set a task start or finish date that is on a non-working (e.g.
weekend or holiday).

However, given the date in your example (i.e. 8/6/2008 is a Wednesday),
the difference is probably due to mouse resolution. If you want precise
control of a date, you should enter it into the appropriate date field
directly.

Now a word of caution. Users should NOT be entering dates directly into
the Start and Finish fields of Project. Doing so sets a constraint on
the task and effectively defeats Project's scheduling algorithm.
Schedule dates in Project are determined by the project start date, task
estimated duration, and links between tasks. In a few isolated cases a
fixed start date may be necessary. Once a project has started and
adjustments need to be made (e.g. delays), changes should be made to the
Duration field. If the actual start and/or finish of a task is different
from the original estimate, that date should be entered into the Actual
Start and Actual Finish fields. Project will then adjust the scheduled
start and finish to agree with what really happened.

Boy, there's a lot more to this than pushing rectangle edges around.
Thanks, John.

 

[Paul]

Hi Paul,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Can't say, but that is not a particularly good technique as it is inaccurate
as you've found out. Don't fiddle with dates, just enter the new Duration
and Project will calculate it for you as it's designed to do.

I'm actually trying to document past effort. I know the approximate
time frames over which certain activities took place, but not the
exact number of person-days it took. As well, I've got various
unrelated activities occuring over the same time period, so I'm not
using the number of working days in that time period to gauge the
level of effort.