Beginner Help needed & Question on "% Work Complete"

[shadestreet]

Can anyone recommend a good site with tutorials on using Microsoft Project?

Also, I have a Gantt chart created and I wanted to add "% Work Complete" column, but I want to manually over-ride the percentages without the dates being changed. Through the Options>>Calculations tab I unchecked some fields that allow me to over-ride the percent of work complete, but I cannot modify the parent task. For example:

I have a group where the three pieces to the main function are all at 100%, but the parent row for the group will not change from 0% no matter what I do.

Thanks

 

[PDQBach]

No sites that I know of. Amazon/Chapters/eBay for books on Project would be a better bet. At your level of experience, almost any book on project will have something worthwhile to offer to you.

If you want to change %Complete without changing dates then you should use fixed duration tasks.

I cannot understand why the task %Complete is not changing when the sub-tasks have changed their %Complete. Perhaps you are confusing %Complete with %WorkComplete.

 

[shadestreet]

Thanks for the help, maybe a good Project Book will be a good Christmas present for me.

Is there a way to convert my tasks to "fixed duration tasks"?

 

[PDQBach]

I'm kinda pressed for time right now and you need a fuller explanation than what I'm about to give you.

These instructions will accomplish your stated goal, but you need to understand some additional background and I'll have to provide that later.

First you need to insert two columns:

1. View | Gantt
2. Click on the cell at the top of the Task Name column. This will select the entire column.
3. Press the Insert Key
4. In the pop-up select the column "Type"
5. Repeat steps 1-4 and select the column "Effort Driven"

Now you need to set the contents of those columns for each task:

6. Set the "Type" column for all tasks to "Fixed Duration"
7. Set the "Effort" column for all tasks to "No".

Now you will be able to change the work and the dates will remain fixed.

I don't know which version you're running. On P2003, click in the help text box and enter "work unit duration" (no quotes). Press enter. You'll get a display of likely topics. Choose "About task types"; then choose "About effort driven scheduling"; then choose "About scheduling".

Once you know those topics, you'll be providing support here, too!