You absolutely, positively cannot "mix and match" the % completes. Before
anything else, when you are entering a task is "XX % Complete" be absolutely
certain just exactly what information you are conveying about the task? Are
you saying that out of such and such an estimated duration we have worked a
certain percentage of the time? Are you saying out of YY estimated
man-hours required to complete the task we have used up a certain percentage
of them? (And remember, man-hours of work and hours of duration ARE NOT the
same thing and are not necessarily equal to each other, even though both use
the units "hours"!) Or are you saying that or the total amount of "stuff"
that the task is required to deliver, you have done XX percent of it?
Normally when you enter a task is XX% Complete or work is YY% Complete,
Project keeps the two linked so updating one also updates the other to the
same percentage. That's because work usually proceeds evenly through the
task and so when we have passed over 50% of the time that it will require we
will have also done 50% of the work that is required. But that is by no
means always true. To cover those cases where work does not proceed at an
even pace, in the Tools, Options menu, Calculation tab there is a check box
labeled "Updating task status updates resource status" and if you clear that
check box it breaks the link and lets you enter them independently.
You can find % Physical Complete by displaying the default tracking table:
View, Tables, Tracking. Since you said you were entering actual starts and
progress I assumed you already had that table open since that's the best
place to post progress. If you want to see it in some other tables, right
click on the column headers and add the column "Physical % Complete"
No offense intended but the reason what you are trying to do can't be done
is because what you say you want to happen simply does not make any sense
and violates the basic rules of arithmetic. The duration is the total
amount of time on the working time calendar between when the task starts and
when it finishes, finish date minus start date ignoring non-working time on
the calendar. If the start date is locked in because some work has taken
place - actuals record real historical events and reflect what really and
truly happened when it happened - and you change the finish date, the
duration MUST change - the length of time between Sept 1st and Oct 1st is
longer than the length of time between Sept 1st and Sept 15th. An Actual
Duration is just what it says it is - if I have worked on the task for each
of 5 days between Sept 1st and now, my actual duration is 5 days. If my
expected duration is 10 days I've worked 50% of it. If my expected duration
is 20 days, I've worked 25% of it. If I've worked 5 days and my duration
was at 10 but that now changes to 20 because I adjust the expected finish
date (ie, the estimated duration is revised), the percent complete displayed
must drop from 50% to 25%. Anything else would be like claiming 2+2 should
equal 22.
HTH
