There's two issues here John. First of all there's no way to enter a task
and have its dates remain blank - that runs contrary to the entire purpose
of a tool like MS Project. A task doesn't exist unless it is a physical
activity taking place over an observable period of time, therefore the start
and end of a task is crucial to its definition in the plan. Second, and
extremely important, "assigning start and finish dates" is contrary to the
way MS Project functions. You don't tell it the dates you have scheduled
the tasks to occur ... it tells YOU the dates where you SHOULD be scheduling
the tasks to be done in order to create the most efficient project plan. It
is not designed to merely document a schedule you have conceived by some
other means. Instead it is intended to be used to create the schedule for
you in the first place, taking as its input the date you'll kick off the
process, the list of activities you need to perform, the relationships
between them as illustrated by a flowchart of the process (ie, dependency
links), an estimate of the length of time each activity will require, and
the availability of the assets you have at your disposal to get the work
done.. In fact it is actually impossible to enter bothy the start and end
dates for a task ... I know it appears you can but typing something into
those columns doesn't actually set a date at all - entering something in the
"start" actually sets an earliest possible start date but doesn't prevent it
from other factors pushing it later while entering a "finish" sets an
earliest permissable finish date. Trying to enter both gives you one
constraint, whichever one happens to be the last entry you made.
