Cannot change the start date of a whole project

JustinPaterson

Hi,

I have a project with some linked predecessors in it, but some events without. I am trying to make the whole project start later and keep all the relative dates and dependencies.

I cannot select all events and drag - I see lots of arrows that seem to loop back to the beginning.

I tried creating a new date column with an offset, but when I selected the original start column to paste the offset dates, after a warning, it removed all my existing dependencies. Pasting over individual dates works for some rows, but for others gives the same warning.

I do not want to set up the entire project with dependencies so that I can simply adjust the first date. Is there another way to do this?

Best regards,

Justin

Mike Wilday

This has been the bane in our side too for multiple years. I would suggest setting up dependencies for everything, highlight the rows you add it to, adjust the date, and then remove those dependencies. It is quite a challenge working in a mixed environment when you have to adjust all the dates but not everything is a dependent task. 

JustinPaterson

Thanks Mike.

For my project, this is not a trivial operation. I wonder if anyone knows of another and quicker way?

Cheers,

Justin

 

J. Craig Williams

In my opinion, everything in a project has at least ONE dependency. Whether you call it "Project Start" or "Project Approved" or "Green Light", there is a reason all of those other tasks will be done.

Any task without a Predecessor should be linked to that or to a previous milestone.

Any PM software that would let you put in a date and then move them without some logic to why should be avoided at all costs.

Craig

 

Mike Wilday

 @Craig, I concur. Everything should be a dependency of something. However - I have superiors who disagree with me. They think items should exist alongside but outside of impacting the whole project -- even though everything related to a project impacts it to some degree. I just spent hours Resetting dependencies on a sheet that originally had no dependencies so we could recalculate timings. They had removed the dependencies originally cause they weren't happy with the project timeline. 

Anyhow, Justin... without setting up the dependencies you will be unable to affect all the dates. You will have to manually calculate out the date difference in the change. I'd use a formula in a blank sheet to figure out how many working days there are between the initial project date and the new date. Then use a similar formula to calculate the difference for the items that do not have dependencies. It still feels like it would be simpler to just set up dependencies. Sorry I can't be of more help. 

J. Craig Williams

Mike 

Tell them I said they are wrong. Tell them they wasted one hour of the owner/shareholder's money.

Have them call me for a lesson in how not to do things.

I had a boss that cut 12 weeks out of a schedule because he didn't think it should take so long. We were 2 weeks later than the original schedule, which I blame partially on the meetings we had to explain why we were late every week for 5 months. Idiot. I would never call him my superior. 

Craig

Mike Wilday

HAHAHAH  I'd lose my job if I did that. But I can't say I haven't expressed those same sentiments. I should have said upper-management.

JustinPaterson

Thanks guys.

I guess as a newbie to this I set up my project in a flaky fashion.

I understand your point Craig about needing some logic to move any date, but if my logic was to start the whole project a week later without changing anything in the plan – it is at the proposal stage, so what I say, goes – then it would be nice to be able to grab everything and slide it forward by a week. There should not be any need to assert my logic to dozens of sub-elements of that project that 'look' fine.

Anyway, I am not trying to pick an argument with more experienced users. Let's call it a feature request…:-)

Thanks again,

Justin

J. Craig Williams

Justin.

Assuming you have either

1. No predecessor

or

2. Only Start Date dependencies (finish-to-start or start-to-start),

then try this:

a. Create new Date type column.

b. Add this formula to the first cell and copy it to the rest of the column

=[Start Date]1 + 7

(assuming your start date column is named that)

c. Filter on the Predecessors column for blanks.

d. Copy the contents from the new column to the [Start Date] column.

e. Un-filter and delete/hide the column you added in (a)

Your schedule should now be shifted one week.

Note that you can not copy into a date that has a predecessors -- without having the system delete the predecessor.

I hope that helps.

Craig

 

Mike Wilday

That's a great suggestion, Craig. It is a manual fix, but better than nothing!

JustinPaterson

Hi Craig,

First let me apologize for the crazy (and apparently rude) delay in replying to you. For some reason, I missed the notification of your reply, and had stopped working on this project for several months. I just came back to it just now, and found your manual fix as I reminded myself of what was going on.

It worked a treat! Thank you so much for taking the time to tell me about this… I cannot tell you how much time you saved me!

Just for other newbies out there, when you copy =[Start Date]1 + 7... the "1" of course needs to be the actual row number for each copy. I am sure that there is a way to make it track, but I just changed them manually.

 

Thanks again Craig! I am sure that lots of other people will find this fix and benefit hugely. You are a good man.

Cheers,

Justin