Predecessors and Formula's Error when I delete rows

Patrick Galvin

I have a master sheet that has tasks for all types of projects and depending on the customer we sign, I will go through and delete the rows I no longer need. The issue is that my RYG (error: #BLOCKED) and Predecessors (error: #REF) error when I do this which means I then need to go back and correct them manually

Is there any way around this?

I find that setting up the initial plan / sheet is extremely fiddly and I need this to be more of a cookie-cutter style with minimal effort if possible

Shaine Greenwood

Hi Patrick,

It sounds like you're deleting rows that your formulas and other rows in your predecessors reference (predecessors also use a formula on the backend), which breaks the formulas.

Have you tried applying conditional formatting to them or filtering them out instead?

More on conditional formatting.

Details on filters.

J. Craig Williams

Patrick,

Are you doing something like this?

Master Project Schedule - built for contingencies, where each "?" is a decision point and the project can change depending on decisions?

Something like:

Start

Decision Pt 1 (A or

If A - project tasks on branch A (6 weeks)

If B - project tasks on branch B (4 weeks, more resources)

Both A and B end at 

Decision Pt 2 (C or D)

etc...?

I have successfully built a project that had 6 possible paths into a single sheet.

At each decision point, the PM choose the decision, made one small change to a Predecessor and the non-chosen path was taken out of the system (it was still there, just no longer impacting the schedule dates or activities or notifications)

This allowed one master schedule to account for the six possible project schedules - saving on maintenance time when changes needed to be made to the master due to lessons learned.

If you built something like that you wouldn't need to delete the unneeded tasks rows.

Craig