Gantt bar durations are a day short

[Bazzrington]

Pulliing my hair out over this one. I have a 700+ line schedule and somehow
I've not only managed to loose the full critical path but more annoyingly the
gannt bars now show durations a day shorted than they are entered - the
actual start/finish dates are okay (as are depenedncies bewteen tasks). I.e.
a one day task has a barely perceptiple duration in the gantt dar and a two
day tasks shows a 1 day duration. Where there is a depenency, the dependency
is illustrated as if there it is fs+1d. I have zoomed right in to show only
days and reset the gantt wizard I don't know how many times. Any more
suggestions on whats up?

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

I am not entirely sure I follow, but has the project calendar been flipped
to something other than what you had? (Project > Project Information)

The next thing I would check is Tools > Options > Calendar to see if any
of those options have changed.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Bazzrington]

No, the Project Calendar is Standard. I did have a few tasks that were not
using the standard calendar but I've now decided to kick those into touch
(and guess what .... my critical path is back). However I still have the
problem with the gantt bars showing a day shorted than they should be.

It's so frustrating that I've even tried amending the bar details to show
Finish+1day as the end point. Alas, this does not seem to be supported.

Having now gone back through my version history to see when it started and
if there're any clues as to what changed at that point - I must admit it does
look suspiciously like it has something to do with calendars since I was
trying to set one up to undertake implementations between 1am and 4am. I
don't think I sucessfully managed to change the working time for a new
calendar, but suspect I may have buggered something up in the process of
trying.

However as far as I know, all resources and all tasks are still set to the
standard 8 hour, 8-5 calendar.

Any ideas how to delete calendars that you don't want so I can eliminate the
extraneous one I created as the source of the issue? Or indeed, how do you
change working times on specific project calendars (every time I click
Options from the change working time dialogue, I get the same "standard" 8-5
settings (even on night shift and 24 hour calendars).

Another weird thing I've now found is that the illustrated gantt duration
changes based on the Gantt zoom, thus a 1day (8am to 5pm) task shows:
- correct duration (8am -5pm) when zoom set to show bottom tier in 1 hour
increments
- duration (8am - 4pm) when zoom set to show bottom tier in 2 hour increments
- duration (6am - 3pm) when zoom set to show bottom tier in 3 hour increments
- duration (8am - 4pm) when zoom set to show bottom tier in 4 hour increments
- duration (6am - 12pm) when zoom set to show bottom tier in 6 hour increments
- duration (8am - 4pm) when zoom set to show bottom tier in 8 hour increments
- but looks like 0.1d when zoom set to show bottom tier in 1 day increments

Any ideas?

 

[Rob Schneider]

Quick idea to help debug: if you have not done already, does it help if
you display the dates to also show you the start times (Menu:
Tools/Options, Tab: View, "Date Format"). Doing this you might spot
where you have unexpected dates (off by minutes which moves to a
different day).


--rms

www.rmschneider.com

 

[Bazzrington]

I deleted extraneous calendars - did'nt help.

Then tried to create a new calendar again and tried to change this calendars
working time. Turns out (as I half suspected) the process I'm using actually
changes the standard calendar working time (I set a 4 hr working day and all
then all 8hr/1day tasks changed to 2 day duration (but still showed in gantt
as if they were taking a fraction of a day).

I then reset working times back to standard settings. Lo and behlod the
gantt durations now fixed. Checked back to the settings what I had in
previous version. Wait for it... I'd had working time from 8pm - 5am (rather
than 8am - 5pm) ...Doh!

So I'd still like to know how to edit the working times for a calendar other
than the standard.

 

[Bazzrington]

Mike,

Thanks very much. I have 2007 and managed to update working times for a new
calendar as you describe. Have to say that it was pretty clunky interface
though!

Now I just have to hope that if I use this new calendar for some tasks, that
I still get to keep my critical path!

Cheers again.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

For what it's worth I spent two hours last week then escalated to another
two resources who worked an hour each before realizing that the issue was
a typo I'd inserted into the URL. Still living that one down....

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm