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No pressure or anything! (HA!) (Long) Microsoft Project

No pressure or anything! (HA!) (Long) Microsoft Project

No pressure or anything! (HA!) (Long)

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 10:59 AM PDT

I can't type as fast or as much as Steve House has already done, but on top
of the truth he has told you, here are some helpful hints. They are
interspersed in your post below:

--
-Jack ... For project information and macro examples visit
http://masamiki.com/project

..
"lamby74" <microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:com... 
Project 
matter 

Go to tools menu. tracking. save baseline. Then switch to the tracking view
or any other view which displays the baseline.
There is not much you can do to screw up the baseline except deleting tasks
or overwriting it by accident.
 

No one can unless it is a simple case, Project is supposed to do this for
you. One doesn't expect to know the bottom line in a complicated spreadsheet
before excel calculates it. Project is at it's heart just a schedule
calculator. You write the equation, it does the work. You can practice
writing equations by developing simple schedules (with two or three tasks)
and trying out the various settings. This is a very good way to learn.
 

It is all explained in the help. You just need to read it and read it again
and then one more time to be sure. Did I mention practicing on small
schedules.
 

See above and above that.
 
mortgage 

No. When you have the schedule the way you want, save a baseline and a copy
of the file. Any edits from this point on will affect your schedule and
there is no undo.
 
it 
predict 
its 

This is true. It all depends on the equation and conditions you have set.
Try some practice schedules with tasks set to various types (effort driven
or not, Fixed work, fixed duration, fixed units). Project is supposed to
give you an answer. If you have a correct model it (generally - there are
cases where there may be a bug) gives you a correct answer. This is the
whole purpose of the tool.
 
Resource 
to 
the 
w=d*u 
correct?

Yes, but at a certain point it becomes rather complicated and overwhelms my
brain. To retain sanity, I simplify my schedules to a certain extent and
only model what it important. I also do not worry about the occasional
minute or even day that it may be off. In any event, plans and predictions
of the future can not be 100% accurate. Expecting that they are is, to put
it mildly, insane.
 

No.
 

I think you can give him bottom-line answers with a little practice. They
may not be the answer he wants, but project just does what it is told.

-Jack

Inserting a fixed date task into an adjusting time line

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 08:25 AM PDT

Hi Maichael,

Power Point doesn't do Resource Leveling, Project does :-))

Yes there is an algorithm - Only a few days ago I gave an overview but I
forgot the title of the thread :-(
By all means, Assignments/tasks with the lowest priority are postponed
And you can tune priority, it is a task fieled, insofar you have selected
"Priority, Standard" in the Leveling
Order box of the Resource Leveling window.
HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/index.htm
32-495-300 620
"Michael McGillick" <microsoft.com> schreef in
bericht news:com... 
how 
tasks, 
a 
concept). 
to 
the 
20 
have a 
not 
levelled. 
this 
in 
I've 
not 
I 
pulls 
How 
make 
working 
tasks 
needed 
by 
three 
task, 
adjusting 

How can I view a Project file without the software?

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 07:27 AM PDT

Hi THinson,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :-)

No - sorry :( You might be able to purchase an older version of Project on
ebay.

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

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

THinson wrote: 

Too many resources

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 07:21 AM PDT

I don't have any ideas to offer. It seems you have painted yourself into a
bit of a corner by trying to simplify things. Consider, even for the
projects where you haven't run into a problem, if each project is
represented by a single task entry in your plan and there is more than one
going on at once, having the same resource on more than one plan doesn't
necessarily mean he's overallocated. For discussion lets say there are 3
projects going on at once, each lasting 2 months. Joe is assigned to all
three. By representing them your way, he is going to show overleeveraged,
triple booked for his time. In fact it could be fine because project A only
needs him the first 2 weeks, project B uses him during week 3, 4, and 5, and
project C uses him the rest of the time. Incorporating the detail task
breakdowns would let you see that but simply showing each project as a
single task won't. Certainly an enterprise level master plan makes a lot of
sense but it requires some cooperation on the part of the fucntional PMs as
well as things you can do on your own (such as getting everyone up to speed
on MS Project and moving the holdouts over from Excel). My best advice is to
bite the bullet and do it by the book - sorry.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"tonik" <microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:com... 

Background color

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 06:23 AM PDT

Hi Anna,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :-)

Not possible, sorry :(

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

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

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

Anna wrote: 

MS should provide a FREE MS project viewer............

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 06:01 AM PDT

Hi jt,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup :-)

Please see FAQ Item: 16. Project Viewer.

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

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

Mike Glen
Project MVP

jt wrote: 

How do I get the base calendar to reflect 09:00 to 17:30 working .

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 04:29 AM PDT

You can edit the standard calendar just like any other. But the hours you
will get when editing any base calendar when you click the radio button "Use
Default" in the upper right part of the change working time dialog box will
always be 08:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:00 and that cannot be changed. Those
hours are hard coded and there is not way to modify them, not even a
registry hack. You can define any hours you want to be the normal workday
but anything other than 0800-1200 and 1300-1700 is "non-default working
time" by definition.

You can simplify it so you don't have to redo it every new project if that's
your objective. Open the standard calendar in Change Working Time, select
all the column headings for the week, click the "Nondefault working time"
button and enter 09:00-12:00 and 13:00-17:30 (or whatever your lunch period
is). Probably a good idea to also click Options and change the default start
time and default end time entries to 09:00 and 17:30 as well - this doesn't
change the calendar but usually should agree with it. Also set the "hours
per day" to 7.5 and if you work a 5 day week, the "hours per week" to 37.5.
Click "Set As Default" then click OK to close the dialog boxes and save
changes. Now in the menu choose Tools, Organizer and select the Calendars
tab. The calendars in the global will be listed on the left. The calendars
in your current project, including the standard you just modified, will be
listed on the right. Select the edited Standard calendar in the right
column and click the "<<copy" button in the middle to copy it over into
global and overwrite the old version there. Now the normal calendar for all
projects will refelct the 0900-1730 work hours. Clicking "use default" for
a day will revert it back to 0800-1700, nothing to be done about that, but
at least you don't have to edit the calendar each time you start a new
project to set it up for your company's work schedule.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



"Ever Optimistic" <Ever microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:com... 

Completed tasks

Posted: 27 Oct 2004 02:45 AM PDT

Duh! - I wasn't thinking filters:(

Mike Glen
Project MVP

Gordon Blair wrote: 

Printing in Project

Posted: 26 Oct 2004 01:53 PM PDT

Hi Eddie,
You are very welcome. Glad to have helped and thanks for the feedback.
Julie

"Ecain25" wrote:
 

Progress Bar does not match percent complete

Posted: 26 Oct 2004 01:11 PM PDT

Hi Glen,
Check the calculation tab in the Tools --> Options dialog box. There are
several settings there that affect how tracking updates tasks. It may be
possible that the old file has different settings than the new file.
Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.
Julie

"Glenn" wrote:
 

import

Posted: 26 Oct 2004 01:15 AM PDT

There's a bunch of things here I find confusing. First of all you said "in
my calendar and the default calendar" but that's not the hours per day I'm
talking about. In the menu find Tools / Options / Calendar. On that setup
page you'll find "Hours per day" "Hours per week" and "Days per month"
entries. Those fields control how a duration is, say, 3 days, is turned
into hours for storage. Changing the entries on that page DOES NOT change
your working time calendar but they are the conversion factors used to
convert the various valid units of duration to and from hours. You can
think of it as the Options determine how MANY hours you're talking about
when you say "1 day" while the working time calendar determines WHICH hours
out of the 24 count as working hours. If you have it set to 8 hours per day
and enter a task with a duration of "1 day" you'll find the task runs from
8am to 5pm using the default calendar. If you then change the "hours per
day" entry to 7 hours, changing nothing else, and look that task, you'll
find the duration will now read 1.14 days even though the times are still
8am to 5pm for 8 hours of work. That's because you've change the definition
of the number of hours called a "day" but that does not change the number of
hours the task will require.

Work and duration are not the same thing. Work measures the effort required
while duration measures the time it takes. Your 7 hours of work would
require a duration of 1 hour if all 7 resources are assigned 100% and work
together, 7 hours duration if they work at 100% but in sequence for 1 hour
each, 5 days duration if they work in sequence but at only around 18%
effort, or any number of other combinations.

There are so many factors involved with both with the specifics of the file
you're importing the data from and the project you're appending the data
into that it's hard to say just exactly what's going on from the information
you've provided. If you want to email the files to me I'd be happy to take
a look and see what I can figure out.


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs



"parastoo mousavi" <com> wrote in message
news:com... 

Multiple formatting preference sets ?

Posted: 25 Oct 2004 09:24 PM PDT

Hi Gershon

two methods - record a macro that displays / hides the columns - tag this
onto the macro that displays the views from the toolbar buttons (if you went
with this initial suggestion of mine).
OR
create custom tables for each of the views - same method as the views just
under view / tables / more tables .... you can then customise the views that
you created to read these tables rather than the default "entry" table (view
/ more views - edit).

let me know if you need further assistance with this.

Regards
JulieD

"Gershon Shamay" <com> wrote in message
news:eWhsu%phx.gbl...