How do I create a summary line in a schedule that shows the earliest start date and last end date?

Kurt Robohm

I'm looking for a way to make the first row of a project schedule show the earliest start date and last end date without having to make all rows under #1 subordinate to row #1.

This is just a pet peeve that in order to have one row in a schedule display the earliest start, total duration and last end date, I have to make rows 2 to n subordinate to row 1. Would prefer to have a summary row that is more stand alone. Is that possible?

Sameer Karkhanis

If you have one root node for your project (which is anyway how a project plan is built) then all dates, percentages, durations etc. are automatically rolled up.

Project Name (top node)
  |_Summary Task 1
     |_ Child tasks. here....
  |_Summary Task 2
     |_Child tasks here

Kurt Robohm

My apologies, I should have indicated that I'm using a WBS hierarchy. The first row in the project has a WBS code starting with 1, all others become subordinate the #1, such that a child of the first line is 1.1, child of child is 1.1.1.

If you add another row that is not subordinate to #1, the it would be #2 in the WBS, but the dates of children of #2 won't change #1.

So in this example if you had children rows of #1 and #2, capturing the earliest start date, end date and total duration for the two row groups would require using the summary function to find minimum, last and total duration rather than having a single row displayed in the schedule that shows that. In MS Project you can add a summary row at the top of a schedule that is not impacted by the hierarchy below. I'm looking to duplicate that summary row that automatically updates as all other rows are changed.