Microsoft KB Archive/103394

Project: Planned Duration Changes to 0 if New Task Added

PSS ID Number: Q103394 Article last modified on 03-15-1995

3.00 3.00a | 3.00

WINDOWS | MACINTOSH

= SUMMARY =

Planned duration is a field in the Project Status dialog box. This field will be changed to 0 when a new task is added to the project and the Plan is not set for that task.

NOTE: This behaviour does not occur in later versions of Microsoft Project.

= MORE INFORMATION =

Planned duration is a measure of the duration between the planned start date and the planned finish date for the project. When a new task is added, and the plan is not set for that task, the planned finish date in the project status dialog box becomes NA. This causes the calculation of planned duration to become 0.

This effect is similar to the way start and finish dates are handled in summary tasks. The planned start date that is rolled up to become the planned start date for the summary task is the earliest date of any task subordinated to the summary task. Even if only one subordinate task has a planned start date and all others have NA as their planned start date, the one date will be rolled up to the summary. Finish dates are handled differently. The planned finish for the summary task will remain NA until all of the tasks subordinate to it have a planned finish date other than NA. Even if only one of the tasks has NA as the planned finish the summary will have NA as its planned finish date.

In the case of the Project Status dialog box, when a new task is inserted without the plan being set, the planned start date in the dialog box will remain the earliest planned start date of any task in the file, but the planned finish date will become NA because at least one task in the file has NA as its planned finish. This causes Planned duration, which is again measuring the duration between planned start and planned finish, to go to 0 because there is no duration between a date and NA.

For more information about this topic, query on the following words in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

subordinate and na and finish(1-5)

KBCategory: kbusage KBSubcategory:

= Additional reference words: 3.00 3.00a =

Copyright Microsoft Corporation 1995.