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Handling Changes to the Project Start Date

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How often are you told that your project will start on date x and then it is moved to date y, maybe date z before it finally gets going?

Now when your project start date moves, you can just update the start date in the Project Information dialog and a lot of dates will update but not all of them (ex. deadlines, constraints, tasks with actual work). If you want those to move you need to go through Move Project.

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The advantage of Move Project is that everything in the project is moved with respect to its original offset from the project start date. For example, in this project task b has a deadline 5 days into the project and task c has a constraint to start 2 days after the project’s start date.

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Now I select Move Project to update the project start date to 1/12/11.

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And everything in the updated plan has the same offset as it had before. Task b has a deadline 5 days into the project and task c has a constraint to start 2 days after the project’s start date.

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In Project 2007 and earlier, you can access this functionality on the Analysis toolbar, Adjust Dates but there are a few limitations: deadlines and tasks with non-zero percent complete aren’t moved.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2011
    Happy to read it ... it's great ...

  • Anonymous
    January 25, 2011
    Does it also move the tasks with actuals (in that case you break the consistency when you are integrated with the timesheets), or only the remaining work ?

  • Anonymous
    January 26, 2011
    Move Project will move actuals (you'll be warned first). If you don't want this behavior, alternatively you can go to the Project tab - Update Project and select to "Reschedule uncompleted work to after start date". This won't move actuals.

  • Anonymous
    June 20, 2011
    Will Move Project move a project start date beyond an existing task 'start no later than' constraint date?  Or does the move change the constraint date?

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2011
    The move will change the constraint date. So if the constraint date is one week after the start date, then after the move it will be one week after the new start date.

  • Anonymous
    August 12, 2011
    Do you have this in Microsoft Project 2007?

  • Anonymous
    August 15, 2011
    This feature is in Project 2007 but it doesn't work as well. Deadlines and Actuals won't be moved. It is called Adjust Dates and is on the Analysis toolbar.