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Let's say I have three tasks.

I want Task2 (hammock activity) to start at the same time as Task1 but finish at the same time as Task3. Is there a clever way of doing this? This task will adjust it's start, finish and duration based on the tasks it's linked to in MS Project.

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    Is this different from the question that I asked (and had answered) some time ago? - pm.stackexchange.com/questions/9168/…
    – Iain9688
    Commented May 2, 2016 at 6:17
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    I found an additional nice explanation at MPUG that I think does what you want without too much hassle: mpug.com/forums/topic/…
    – Polymath
    Commented May 3, 2016 at 20:06
  • @lain9688 Your link is about the theory of it, but it doesn't work in MS Project. It fills up space between two tasks, but I want the task to extend from the start of Task A to the finish of Task B.
    – Hey Romey
    Commented May 6, 2016 at 0:31
  • @Polymath That worked! What a great tip. I don't know how to mark your comment as the answer, so I marked it with the up arrow.
    – Hey Romey
    Commented May 6, 2016 at 0:36
  • @HeyRomey just glad to help. I used some other peoples input and did some searching. Not a major response, but glad it's what you needed.
    – Polymath
    Commented May 10, 2016 at 12:45

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I'm not sure I'd call this 'clever' or not. The only way I know of to do this would be to write a macro or program. I don't have any code for this handy, sorry.

In my mind it would require that a number or text field be set on the tasks where you wanted this to happen as a multiple value flag field. This is not something to do for every task, of course. Not that you are suggesting that.

The macro would:

  1. Look for the flagged task & select it.
  2. Use the SS predecessor link to find Task 1, say.
  3. Set the start date for the flagged task based on the predecessor task.
  4. Do the same thing on the FF successor.
  5. Look for the next flagged task ... lather, rinse, repeat ...

You might want to have values in the flag field to identify what to do about things like multiple successors or predecessors with SS / FF relationships & there would be code to deal with the different conditions if so.

This would not be too hard for the simple case presented in the OP.

Resource leveling is not a solution for this case. Without getting to far down the rabbit hole, resource leveling is just not designed to derive a tasks duration between constraints or actuals of other linked tasks.

All that said, this is one of those things a lot of PMs would likely not want to have happening automatically during project execution. But, it might be a useful tool during a schedule build or significant update. Having it in a macro that you have to trigger yourself seems okay to me ...

Thanks for the question. If this answers your question, please mark it as such. If I get some time maybe I can post some code. Don't wait for me though!

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  • I see this as an option that would work and I could write the macro if I go this route. But how could I get this to work dynamically (without using change events in VBA)?
    – Hey Romey
    Commented May 1, 2016 at 20:14

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