Project 2007: Actual Finish Date & Finish

[Tahseen Shahzad]

I am trying to update a lot of project files within the company and one aspect that needs updating is the Actual Finish Date. The Project has a planned Start Date and a Planned Finish date. These should remain as they are, but when I am trying to add the Actual Finish dare to the project, then it amends the Finish Column as well which I do not want it to do? Can anyone help me out? Thanks.

[Coolestman]

It seems to me that you need to Baseline your schedule. The start and finish dates displayed in the Entry table with the Gantt Chart view displays the dates which are either scheduled to occur or have occurred, hence when you update the Actual Finish the finish date shows the same value. If you are having a baseline of your schedule then it will allow you to compare actuals against planned for duration, start, finish, work and cost values for every task, milestone and summary task in your schedule.

[Jerry]

You can try to save a baseline for the project that you are having before updating the actual data. When you save a baseline then it will copy the current start, finish, duration, work, and cost into Baseline start, Baseline Finish, Baseline Duration, Baseline Work, and Baseline cost fields. Those baseline values are not altered by Project when you track. There are Variance fields, which will show the difference between baseline data and actual data.

[Beter 2 Burn Out]

Actually, the finish date is a calculated field that takes the project start date, task durations and any constraints or dependencies into account. If you update the tasks with the dates actually worked, then it re-calculates the Finish date. So, to compare the planned Finish Date with the actual Finish Date, which is what I think you are after, then you will need to create a baseline at the start of the project, and use variance to track it. Check the below link that will help you out for same:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/pr...514501033.aspx