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I have a task called "Interview person A about topic X". The task's duration is set to 2 hours. The start date of the task should automatically be calculated taking dependencies and resource availabilities into account.

My question boils down to: How can I force this task to start and end on the same date?


Background: In my case, Microsoft Project sets the start date to a Friday at 5pm. As my working hours are set to 8am to 12am and 1pm to 6pm (Mon-Fri), Microsoft Project "splits up" the task at 6pm on Friday and plans to continue it at 8am on the following Monday.

However, it does not make any sense to stop the interview on a Friday and restart it on Monday. Therefore the automatic suggestion is not helpful in this case.

That's why I'm looking for a way way to force the task to start and end on the very same day. (In my example, I'd like Microsoft Project to delay the start date of the task until Monday 8am as this is the first time slot in which the task "fits in completely".)

By the way: I have lots of such cases... for that reason it would be really great if there was a solution that doesn't just deal with this single special case.

3 Answers 3

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As far as I am aware there is no way to do this within the standard product offering. There is just no facility for instructing MS-P not to span day boundaries. You could simulate it by applying a resource to the task that only works on one day, thereby forcing MS-P to schedule the entire task within that one day, but that probably takes more effort than simply forcing it to start on the Monday, so not a very practical solution. Or, if the interview was always two hours elapsed then you could apply a resource that only works two hours every day- that way it could only schedule one per day but they would start and end on the same day. But again, not a very practical solution.

There may be a programmatic way of solving this using VBA as you suggest, but I have never used VBA in MS-P so cannot advice further on that one.

Interesting problem though!

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I had the same problem, and I solved it using decimals, for instance, 12.2d (twelve point two days) may be you can try 0.2d here's a link where you can get more info.

http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1681077&seqNum=4

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I know it's an old topic but for those that are looking for answers to similar issue:

Try adding a milestone with a separate calendar assigned that will have the start time the same as the activity, but finish time X-number of hours before the anticipated duration of the task you'd like to drive. Then link the milestone FS to the task and from all the predecessors the task is linked from.

How it works: the milestone will start normally on the day 1, but if the predecessors drive it to such time that the duration would drag into day 2, the milestone will jump to start of day 2.

For example: if your task duration is 2 hours, and you want to make sure it finishes by 6pm, set the end time on the calendar assigned to the milestone to 4pm. So if the predecessor drives it to 5pm, the milestone will go to day 2 and start at 8am

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  • Could you include some screenshots of this?
    – Burgi
    May 15, 2017 at 8:15
  • I would also be interested in understanding this proposed solution better.
    – Hauke P.
    Jun 26, 2017 at 18:37

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