Duration questions when specify work & used Fixed Work

[Katherine]

I typed in some tasks, and I also typed in the resource, amount of work (not
duration), and in some cases the units(ie 50%). I also have selected 'Fixed
Work'.
There are a number of inconsistent things happening as follows:
1) For some tasks, the duration is correct for the units, but has a ? after
it.
2) In some summary tasks, there is a ? after the duration. This seems to be
true If one of the tasks it is summarizing has a ?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Katherine --

The "?" symbol indicates that the Duration is an "estimated" value,
calculated by the software when you assign a resource, and then set the
Units and Work values. If you manually enter a Duration value by typing it
in the Duration field, you won't see the ? symbol for that task. If you do
not wish to see the question mark symbols at all, you can turn them off
entirely by using the following steps:

1. Open a project
2. Click Tools - Options
3. Select the Schedule tab
4. Deselect the last two checkboxes (notice that they both refer to
"estimated Durations"
5. Click the Set as Default button
6. Save and close the project

Repeat the above steps for every project currently displaying the ? symbol.
Hope this helps.