How to retrofit past activities into project plan?

[larryq22]

I was charged with developing MS Project plans for about 40 projects, most of which have been in progress for a while (some are halfway through, some almost finished, some have a year left, etc). These plans will be used to track progress rather than to schedule activities. (I realize this doesn't take advantage of Project's potential, but hey. Gotta start somewhere.)

The trouble is, most of these projects have no project plan against which to report activity. So I'm left with creating a plan mid-stream, so to speak. My workaround has been to develop skeleton project plans, ask project leads what has been accomplished on the project, and "insert" these activities in an appropriate place on the plan (assigning them a rough % of completion). Then, as these plans catch up to reality, they can be more sophisticated about scheduling, resources, etc.

My question: how do I insert a task (with dates and % completion) without Project moving all other tasks to fit the new one? I just want to add the task, add the start & end dates, and have it show up on the Gantt. Maybe I'm being thick-headed and it's easy, but I guess I need a step-by-step. Thanks in advance.

 

[johnherman]

One way to hold the start date of the existing tasks is with a Must Start On constraint (in the Advanced tab).

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

 

[fullofquestions]

Do not assign any dependencies to any of the tasks.