Project times keep getting shifted

[GregPoulos]

I have a project file that keeps shifting years into the future. thi
seems to happen randomly in between some saves. Most of the time i
works just fine, but sometimes the startdate of the project changes t
the year 2026!

This is a huge problem because the project is in progress and the task
that are complete or partially complete and aren't easily moved.

Any ideas what is going on and how it can be prevented

 

[Jim Aksel]

Hello Greg -
First, nothing happens randomly. The things that drive the start date are
links to predecessors (examine the finish dates of those), and comanded
constraints such as "Start No Earlier Than"

The duration of a predecessor may drive you as well depending on the task
type. Example: You have a fixed units predecessor with one resource
assignment. You load his work at 2000 hours and push his duration for one
year. A fixed work task will increase in duration as the resource units%
falls.

I would start by inserting the constraint type, constraint dates columns. I
would split the screen to see the task details form in the bottom pane.

Also look at the predecessors/succussors for the tasks in question. If you
are linking these to/from an external file, the problem may reside there.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

Check out my new blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Greg,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might also look for resources and precedence links on Summary tasks
(filter for summaries and look at those two colums) and remove them.

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

 

[GregPoulos]

Hi guys, thanks for responses. It seems the likely culprit was some
external predecessors. Some tasks were linked to another project file.
In that project file some of the durations for tasks increased to
hundreds or thousands of days each. This was also very confusing and
troubling.

I don't know if that is really the issue though. While there were tasks
in Project A that were waiting on tasks from Project B that would be
pushed years into the future with the durations increasing, the problem
is that the Project Start Date changed to the year 2026. This causes all
the tasks are already done or partially done to be a huge hassle to have
to drag back to the year 2008 as they won't change their date when
leveling.

I'm uninstalling and reinstalling along with getting service pack 1 for
office project. Hopefully this will shake out any strangeness that
happens to be lingering around.

I'll let you know more oddities occur!

I'm using the Enterprise edition by the way.

thanks,
Greg

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Greg and thanks for the feedback

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