Auto Calculating Fields

[Gareth]

Hi Guys,
After installing a patch for project 2003 to fix the not
outdenting issue i am no longer able to auto calculate fields. If i change a
value in a row then all the other relevant fields in that row will change,
but the changes are not reflected / calculated in the totals for instance.

This worked fine before installing any updates, after installing the patch
it stopped working, installing the service pack did not help either.

Also, when i tell project to calculate the fields manualy it works fine.

Thank you for your help
Gareth Roberts

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hi,
Check that the Calculation is still set to Automatic :
Tools / Options / Calculation...
Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Gareth]

Sorry, i should have said in my first post.
Auto calculation is set to automatic. This is why i'm totally stumped.

A bit more information.
It appears that it is Summary tasks that are not auto calculating.
If this helps?

Thanks
Gareth

 

[Gareth]

Another thing i forgot to add (sorry guys)

It seems as if it is only not calculating customised fields.

For instance, if i modify the duration of a task.... the change will be
reflected in the summary .

However if i change the price of a task, the change will not be reflected in
the summary.

Thanks again.

Gareth

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Take a look at the definition of the field in the Tools/Customize menu and
make sure the the radio button that controls it's rollup behaviour is set
properly. Custome fields don't rollup into summary tasks until you tell it
to do it.

 

[CK]

Hi Steve,

For the project plan that I work on in some of the Summary it autocalculates
but in some of them it doesn't. I 've tried the manual calculation as well
as what have you proposed here. Nothing works. And this is for the duration
field.

Thanx

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Duration and cost are not custom fields.
Duration is roolled up in a sence that duration on the summary line reflects
the difference between start and finish (start of the ealiest task, end of
the latest). Indeed, sometimes changi,ng the duration of a task influences
duration of the summaryu task, sometimes it doesn't.

Fixed Cost is NOT rolled up to the summary lines, but Total cos ("Cost") is.
HTH

 

[Gareth]

Thanks for that Steve,
I checked that the rollup behaviour was set to sum
which it has always been set to and it still did not work. I then (just out
of boredom) set all of the fields to use the "use formula" radio button and
it all worked absolutley fine.

Why is it that the use formula option now works yet the "sum" rollup method
does not, especially since nothing has changed with the document. (only
patches etc.)


Thanks for your help

Gareth Roberts

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I'm not sure, but I think the "sum" rollup method is doing just what it
says - adding the values in the fields in question and putting them in the
summary line. The "use formula" method is applying the same formula to the
summary line to calculate the field in question that is used to calculate it
in the detail lines.

Here's an example. I have subtasks with a custom field that adds 10% to the
total cost to calculate a per-task billing amount. (Not that you should use
Project that way but just for purposes of discussion lets say we're going
to.) We have a summary with 4 subtasks, each with a cost of $100. Our
custom billing field would contain $110 for each task while the task's cost
field would contain $100. The summary task's cost field would contain $400,
the sum of the individual subtasks. How to get the summaries rolled-up
billing field?

I'm don't know for a fact but I suspect that the values in calculated custom
fields are not actually stored in the database - in fact, proper database
design would have them calculated on the fly when the view is displayed just
like happens with calculated fields in Access or Oracle queries. IF our
custom field for the individual subtasks was calculated before the summary
task, they would contain $110 and a rollup using the "sum" method would put
$440 into the summary line. But what I think is happening is the
calculation order ripples down from top to bottom and so the summary line is
cacluated BEFORE the detail subtask line. If the subtasks are were
calculated AFTER the summary line, at the time the summary is calculated the
subtasks still contain nulls in their calculated custom fields and so that's
what would go the the summary. On the other hand, the value for the
internal field "cost" IS stored in the database so at the time everything is
calculated for the summary line, that field would contain $400 and the "use
formula" method would add 10% to that to give the customefield a "rolled up"
value of $440. It's not really directly summing to the summary line but
instead the source of the inputs for the calculations are allready rolled up
and so the same formula as applied in the subtasks produces an apparent
rollup in the summary.


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs