Ms Project Dates Increase Without Control

Question

Hi,

I use Officce 2016 and Win10. I have "Hammock Tasks" for my project and several milestones. I would like to tell my problem by giving example. Lets say I have 1 task named Task 1.1 and 2 milestones named M1 and M2. I want to linked start date of Task 1.1 to M1. So I copy the start date of M1 and paste link to start date of Task 1.1. And I have a lag for Task 1.1 about 36 mons. Therefore, I add a precessor to Task 1.1 like Start-to-Start +36 mons which is seem like M1SS+36 mons. After, I copy the finish date of M2 and paste link to the finish date of Task 1.1. When all these steps are done, Ms Project starts increase the finish date of Task 1.1 as 36 mons every 5 - 8 seconds automatically even I don't do anything to pc. It is like a loop which runs background of the program. Can anybody help me with this issue?

Thank you....

Answer 1

Ahmet,

It's still not clear as to exactly what you are trying to achieve. It sounds like you want task 1.1 to start a fixed amount of time after the M1 milestone and finish at the M2 milestone such that as M1 and M2 move, task 1.1 will track. And for that to happen, you do indeed need paste links but the implementation to achieve that is a little more complicated.

First of all, you cannot have both a paste link and a predecessor with lag on the start date of task 1.1. Those two are mutually exclusive. However, you can achieve the above with an intermediate milestone such as is shown in this example. The intermediate milestone, M1-1 picks up the start delay while milestones M1-1 and M2 are used for the paste links to drive the duration span of task 1.1.

John

Answer 2

John,

Thank you for your reply. You said it is better to use not paste links. How can I set the start date of Task 1.1 as start date of M1 with lag of 3 months without using paste links method. Plus, time should not march on because these time changes occurs every 5 - 10 seconds. The duration of Task 1.1 always increases even I don't do anything. And if I save and close the file, the duration of Task 1.1 fixes again but it starts to increase over and over. It does not make sense.

Answer 3

Ahmet,

Haven't you ever heard the expression, "time marches on"?

I tried the scenario you describe and I did not have the issue of a progressive loop. This is how I set it up according to your description, except I used a lag of 3 days instead of 36 mons,

However, it makes no sense to have a paste link on the start of Task 1.1 if you also have a start-to-start predecessor with a lag. Use one or the other, but not both.

The Wiki article about paste links I cited in your other post mentions the fact that paste links are fragile. I can't stress that enough. Paste links should only be used as a last resort and then only used sparingly.

John