MS Project Incorrect Auto-Scheduling Dates

Question

In my project file there are certain lines that do not change dates when auto scheduled.

I have a task with 7 subtasks and the first subtask is manually scheduled, however, when I enter the predecessor information on the second subtask to be dependent on the first subtask the dates on the second task shift out to February, even though the predecessor task that is manually scheduled ended in August. The duration is only 10 days so the dates should not move to February. This occurs with all subtasks. I tried entering new task lines to see if that would solve it but same issue.

How do I fix this?

Answer 1

In addition to John's excellent questions, in Project Information, is "Schedule From" set to "Project Finish Date"? That would set all your task constraints to "As late as possible", leading to this kind of behavior. Be sure that "Schedule From" is set to "Project Start Date" and all task constraints are "As soon as possible." Good luck, tom

Answer 2

JA4321,

Sorry, not enough applicable information. A screen shot might help but we also need this information:

1. What is your Project Start date?
2. What is your Project calendar?
3. Are the task dependencies simple Finish-to-Start or something else?
4. Are any tasks constrained (e.g. start-no-earlier-than)?
5. You say the duration is 10 days but which task? Are all tasks 10 days?

But the most important question, why is the first subtask manually scheduled? Manual scheduling is applicable when first developing a plan as a rough draft but once a plan is fully developed, linked and ready for execution, all tasks should be auto-scheduled to take advantage of Project's dynamic scheduling capabilities.

John