Turn off scheduling hints - need to dumb down Project!

[Sam]

I'm going batty at the moment trying to write a high level project plan.
Basically have got all the tasks set up, have made estimates of the numbers
of days they will take, and am now filling in resource names and tweaking
everything.

Problem: Every time I add/remove a resource name to a task, and/or change
the duration of the task, a little exclamation mark pops up to prompt me to
rejiggle the duration given the new resource situation and/or resource given
the new duration. How can I turn this off? It's driving me nuts!!

I don't want to fiddle with hours, or effort, or anything along those lines
- I'm using the plan purely to indicate the number of days it will take for
each task to get done and the people who will be involved in doing it. There
is no correlation between the number of people involved and the time it will
take to get done.

I realise this is probably a bastardised use of Project and I apologise -
but I really don't want to go back to try to do a gantt chart in Powerpoint
or Excel!! Please help...

Many thanks.
Sam.

 

[John]

I'm going batty at the moment trying to write a high level project plan.
Basically have got all the tasks set up, have made estimates of the numbers
of days they will take, and am now filling in resource names and tweaking
everything.

Problem: Every time I add/remove a resource name to a task, and/or change
the duration of the task, a little exclamation mark pops up to prompt me to
rejiggle the duration given the new resource situation and/or resource given
the new duration. How can I turn this off? It's driving me nuts!!

I don't want to fiddle with hours, or effort, or anything along those lines
- I'm using the plan purely to indicate the number of days it will take for
each task to get done and the people who will be involved in doing it. There
is no correlation between the number of people involved and the time it will
take to get done.

I realise this is probably a bastardised use of Project and I apologise -
but I really don't want to go back to try to do a gantt chart in Powerpoint
or Excel!! Please help...

Many thanks.
Sam.

Sam,
I assume you are using Project 2003. There are several options for
turning off messages. I think the one you want is under
Tools/Options/Interface tab. Uncheck the option for "edits to work,
units or duration".

You probably should also set the default task type to be "fixed
duration". You can find that under Tools/Options/Schedule tab.

No need to apologize for how you want to use Project. Not everybody
needs the full power of the application. Sometimes Project can
accommodate bare bones type plans and I think this is one of those times.

Hope this helps
John
Project MVP