Difference between incomplete and active tasks

Question

I am struggling to understand the difference  between incomplete and active tasks in MSP - could anyone help?

Thanks!

Answer 1

To add a bit to Tom's great answer - users with the Professional version of Microsoft Project (2010, 2013, 2016) can set a task to inactive or "re-activate" an inactive tasks.  Users with the standard version of Project, can see inactive tasks, but they can neither set a task as inactive nor re-activate an inactive task.

Incomplete tasks are tasks where the %Complete is less than 100%.

Answer 2

Old,

Each task you create in a project is "active" unless and until you "inactivate" it - regardless of its completion status or schedule dates.

Turning a task to "inactive" effectively removes it from the scheduling calculations* so that it has no effect on the scheduling of any other tasks.  By default the line for inactive tasks appears grayed-out.  The ability to inactivate and re-activate tasks was introduced in recent versions of Project (I think 2010+).  It is useful for what-if analyses, contingency planning, and project de-scoping.  It provides an alternative to outright deletion of a task, which is normally to be avoided.

* Project 2010 ignores inactive tasks altogether, so inactivating a task's sole predecessor will accelerate the task to the project's start date.  Project 2013 (and presumably 2016) changes this behavior by inserting invisible links between the predecessors and successors of inactivated tasks.

Answer 3

Thanks for the excellent clarification, Julie - I've been using only Pro versions for too long....