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I have been tasked to use Microsoft project in a group assignment to help manage it, but I'm having trouble getting the durations and dates to not auto update.

I basically would like to have the whole week to be able to enter start and finish dates as well as the duration to show the exact time between them. I have changed the calendar work week to 24/7 for the project as well as for all the people in my group but still get the duration changing start and finish dates.

Any help is appreciated.

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You will not get Project not to update the dates based on task duration. For each task, the end date is calculated as the result of the start date + the duration (non-working days are ignored).

Why exactly do you need independant values for date and duration? Are you maybe trying to enter man-days as duration (So if three people work all day, that would make 3 days total)? If yes, then the column "Work" is the one you want.

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  • sorry im probably not explaining it properly. I would just like the start date and duration to dictate the end date and the settings required to allow all days and all hours to work so a day duration doesn't have a difference of two days in the start and finish date
    – Dean Millard
    Commented Jan 9, 2018 at 21:26
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I'm not sure what do you need. Could you add some more detail to your request?

So far, I can think about some options:

  • Disable automatic calculation in MS Project Options configuration, and then press F9 every time you need to recalculate.
  • Use Manual tasks, not automatic (MS Project 2010 and newer).
  • Use elapsed durations (adding an 'e' before the time unit, e.g. "2 edays"), this consider duration without calendar restrictions.

But please clarify exactly what do you need.

Greetings.

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It isn't clear to me what you want to achieve and what project is doing "wrong" when you do something.

As Francisco says you can use Manual scheduled tasks to do almost anything but they're the work of the devil to be honest :)

If you type a date into the start field (thereby setting a should not start before constraint) and then enter a finish date a duration will be calculated. After this point if you change ither either the start or finish date the duration will remain the same and the other date will change.

However if you enter a start date and have any %complete the changing the finish date will chaneg the duration. ALso changing the duraation will chaneg the finish date.

If you get into the annoying position of needing the change the start and finish date you can end up pinging between the two as the duraation will remain constant. In this situation you can a) plahy with the duration until the finsh is where you want it to be, 2) put 10% onto the %complete and change the finish to force the duration to the right point and thn remove the % complete. You may also be able to delete both dates to remove the constraint and start again. Yu can also enter he task details dialogue and chnage the dates there.

One thign to note is that it is generally good prctice to use the predecesor and successor links to drive dates, only adding date constraints if you have to.

If this doesn't help can you give us more invo on what you're doing what project does in return and what you wish it was doing :)

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