Conditional formatting if dates change

[Sandy82]

Hello there

Please could an expert help with my question?

I am a project coordinator with the responsibility of updating a large
project plan (436 tasks) for the project manager. The task status
information is sent to me from various departments.

If I add information which changes dates to a task which has successors, is
it possible to apply conditional formatting to the successors' start and
finish date columns that will indicate if a date has changed? (At present I
have to scroll up and down to each successor task and compare their dates
with a hard copy of the plan).

Many thanks.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Sandy82 --

Microsoft Project 2007 has a new feature called Change Highlighting.
Whenever you change information about a task that impacts other tasks, the
system shows you the changes to either Duration, Start date, or Finish date
for the impacted tasks by highlighting the impacted task information with
light blue cell formatting. If you are using an earlier version of
Microsoft Project, then this feaure is not available to you, and you have to
use the manual process you already use. Hope this helps.

 

[JulieS]

Hi Sandy82,

In addition to Dale's comments, I'll add that if you are using a
version of Project earlier than 2007, you most likely already have
the tools at hand to help you with this.

If you've saved a baseline for your project before updating it, the
baseline copied the Start, Finish, Duration, Cost and Work for each
task into baseline fields. Project automatically calculates
variance (differences) between the baseline information and the
current information in fields such as Start Variance, Finish
Variance, and Duration Variance. You can save up to 11 different
baselines for the project and create formulas in custom fields to
flag for differences. You can then view what changes have been
changed either by the variance data or by the flag.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project

 

[Projectability]

Sandy have you considered using one of the Baseline fields to capture your
schedule dates before updating, there are 10 baselines you can use for this
purpose. You could then also look at using some custom fields to calculate
the difference between the current schedule and the baseline you have saved
to identify any variances. By using this approach and revising the Baseline
values each week prior to updating the schedule you would be able to
identify "current variances" arising during the most recent update cycle.

--
Dominic Moss

Projectability - Helping People achieve more with Microsoft Project

Check the Downloads section on our Website for useful documents on both
Project Management and Microsoft Project

www.projectability.co.uk

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[Steve House]

Are you comparing the new dates to a hard copy of the original plan or are
you comparing to whatever the dates were after the last previous round of
updates? If it's comparing to the original plan AND if you saved a baseline
before starting to apply any updates, the Variance table will show you the
original dates ("baseline start/finiosh") and the new start and finish.
Filter to display tasks with a non-zero variance and you've got it.

 

[vanita]

Hi

You have already got lot of valuable information. I would like to add
something to that.

1. Since you are only monitoring changes in dates with each update, before
updating your schedule save Start/Finish dates as Start1/Finish1 dates
through Tools > Tracking > Set baseline option. So after updating the
schedule you will have latest dates as Start/Finish and previous update dates
as Start1/Finish1.
2. You could see the graphical comparison between two dates by creating
gantt bars for Start1/Finish1 through bar styles. Tabular comparison can be
seen by inserting columns of Start1/Finish1 alongside Start/Finish
3. But, as I understand you want easy and fast identification. So, add a
Text column. Customise it with formula 'IIf([Start1]=[Start] Or
[Finish1]=[Finish],1,0)' and further customise for Graphical indicators to
see Green light for '1' i.e no change and Red light for '0' i.e change in
dates.
4. Now everytime while updating save Start/Finish as Start1/Finish1 and
update your schedule. Automatically your Text column will show you Green/Red
light for each task.

I hope it helps.
Vanita

 

[Sandy82]

Many thanks to you all for all your help, however based on the information
received I have (I think) persuaded my boss to upgrade me to MS Project 2007
which should solve all my problems

Hi

You have already got lot of valuable information. I would like to add
something to that.

1. Since you are only monitoring changes in dates with each update, before
updating your schedule save Start/Finish dates as Start1/Finish1 dates
through Tools > Tracking > Set baseline option. So after updating the
schedule you will have latest dates as Start/Finish and previous update dates
as Start1/Finish1.
2. You could see the graphical comparison between two dates by creating
gantt bars for Start1/Finish1 through bar styles. Tabular comparison can be
seen by inserting columns of Start1/Finish1 alongside Start/Finish
3. But, as I understand you want easy and fast identification. So, add a
Text column. Customise it with formula 'IIf([Start1]=[Start] Or
[Finish1]=[Finish],1,0)' and further customise for Graphical indicators to
see Green light for '1' i.e no change and Red light for '0' i.e change in
dates.
4. Now everytime while updating save Start/Finish as Start1/Finish1 and
update your schedule. Automatically your Text column will show you Green/Red
light for each task.

I hope it helps.
Vanita
--
Project Management consultant and trainer
(e-mail address removed)

Hello there

Please could an expert help with my question?

I am a project coordinator with the responsibility of updating a large
project plan (436 tasks) for the project manager. The task status
information is sent to me from various departments.

If I add information which changes dates to a task which has successors, is
it possible to apply conditional formatting to the successors' start and
finish date columns that will indicate if a date has changed? (At present I
have to scroll up and down to each successor task and compare their dates
with a hard copy of the plan).

Many thanks.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Sandy82 --

I think you will be very happy with Project 2007. The new features are very
useful and very powerful. Hope this helps.

Many thanks to you all for all your help, however based on the information
received I have (I think) persuaded my boss to upgrade me to MS Project
2007
which should solve all my problems

Hi

You have already got lot of valuable information. I would like to add
something to that.

1. Since you are only monitoring changes in dates with each update,
before
updating your schedule save Start/Finish dates as Start1/Finish1 dates
through Tools > Tracking > Set baseline option. So after updating the
schedule you will have latest dates as Start/Finish and previous update
dates
as Start1/Finish1.
2. You could see the graphical comparison between two dates by creating
gantt bars for Start1/Finish1 through bar styles. Tabular comparison can
be
seen by inserting columns of Start1/Finish1 alongside Start/Finish
3. But, as I understand you want easy and fast identification. So, add a
Text column. Customise it with formula 'IIf([Start1]=[Start] Or
[Finish1]=[Finish],1,0)' and further customise for Graphical indicators
to
see Green light for '1' i.e no change and Red light for '0' i.e change in
dates.
4. Now everytime while updating save Start/Finish as Start1/Finish1 and
update your schedule. Automatically your Text column will show you
Green/Red
light for each task.

I hope it helps.
Vanita
--
Project Management consultant and trainer
(e-mail address removed)

Hello there

Please could an expert help with my question?

I am a project coordinator with the responsibility of updating a large
project plan (436 tasks) for the project manager. The task status
information is sent to me from various departments.

If I add information which changes dates to a task which has
successors, is
it possible to apply conditional formatting to the successors' start
and
finish date columns that will indicate if a date has changed? (At
present I
have to scroll up and down to each successor task and compare their
dates
with a hard copy of the plan).

Many thanks.