What is the best way to create a Gantt that schedules backwards automatically from a due date?

n.burg

We have a planned date that we need to be on a construction site to start our work. From that "due date" i know it takes 2 weeks to gather and fabricate material, so i would like the start date of that task to be 2 weeks prior to the due date. Then i would create another task with an automatic due date before the first task's start date, with a 10 day duration. Essentially i am building a schedule with multiple tasks, backwards, to create a schedule. Is this possible?

I realize it would not automate the additional tasks and those would need to be added manually, but i am not sure how set them to use dependencies/predecessors/durations properly to make this work.

In this example the dates would be built by entering 12/15/23 into the due date of the first task

Task Name -- Start Date -- Due Date

1) Fabrication/delivery -- 12/1/23 -- 12/15/23

2) Stocklist -- 11/20/23 -- 11/30/23

Paul Newcome

You would use Start to Finish predecessors.

Cathy Salscheider

I use negative predecessors, just like you would do in MSProject, based on row number. In this sheet, I do forward scheduling at the beginning of the tasks, as they have to start at a specific date. But then work backward from the Live date.

This works great and you can quickly see how your dates line up.