Hell Andyb, welcome aboard.
[Start] in MS Project is a "current forecast" and you should rarely type a
date into that field. Instead, you would rely on predeccessor relationships
to establish those dates for you. Entering a date into [Start] will create
constraints on your schedule such as "Start No Earlier Than" which is not
typlically advisable.
[Actual Start] is the day you actually start performing the work and should
always be a date to the left of "Now". Enterring a date in [Actual Start]
overrides all constraints and predecessors. You should only enter a date
here if the [Actual Start] date differs from the forecasted start date. You
should only enter a date in [Actual Start] when you are also ready to claim a
measure of prgress -- %Complete, %WorkComplete, or Physical%Complete.
Perhaps it is a typo in your post (I sure make plenty of them)... the most
current version of MS Project is Project 2007.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.
Jim
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project
