task becomes milestone when adding actual completion date

[Meeting reminder]

My customer has asked me to add a column as to actual finish date to my
project schedule After adding this task, I received some parts and added the
completion date to that task. I noticed my task which had a start and
completion date of 8 weeks now showed the same start and stop date and the
chart showed a milestone. Is this a structure problem or how do I retain the
start/stop dates and the progress bar?
thanks

 

[Jim Aksel]

I am assuming you added the [Actual Finish] date field to your Gantt view,
not a custom field.
What is happening is the duration is shrinking to accommodate the [Actual
Finish] date while holding the start date. If the [Actual Finish] becomes to
the left of [Start], project will assign [Duration]=[Actual Duration]=0 and
change it to a milestone.

I run into this when a task start/ends early within the same reporting
period. We called this a "preferred task". I usually go back and ask the
CAM what date they actually started and actually finished, for sure an 8 week
task must have a non-zero duration even if it is perferred work. I key the
CAM provided dates into [Actual Start] and [Actual Finish] respectively which
fixes the problem as long as the [Duration]>0.

So, remember that each of these fields are unique and you will be fine:
[Start],[Finish], [Actual Start], [Actual Finish], [Duration], [Actual
Duration]. The Actuals will always drive their counterparts.

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Jim

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