In addition to Jan's advice, another issue is you can't SET the start and
end dates of a task in Project. Entering something in the start date column
sets a Start No Earlier Than constraint but there's nothing that says the
task can't start later than that. Likewise, entering something in the
finish column sets a Finsih No Earlier Than constraint. Trying to set start
and end dates yourself is putting the cart before the horse - the idea of
any scheduling tool such as MS Project is that you tell it what the
predecessors of a task will be, how long the task is expected to take, and
when the resources required will be available and then it tells YOU the
start and finish dates you should use. You don't tell it the project's
schedule, it's job is to figure out the project schedule for you.
