Hi! I am doing a little work with Project today and wanted to share something I learned. Although most of you probably already know this, I thought to share anyway.
Today I was testing saving a project file created in Project Professional 2010, to Project 2007. In this case my project file had Manually Scheduled Tasks. This is a feature added in the 2010 version. Upon saving, a Compatibility Checker came up, and stated I had manually scheduled tasks, and if saved they would be converted. Here’s the conversation process that takes place:
- The system will change Manually Scheduled Tasks to Auto Scheduled, and will add a Start No Earlier Than constraint to the tasks to preserve the dates currently set in the schedule
- The system will also change Manually Schedule Summary Tasks to Auto Schedule Summary Tasks
- Upon converting the Summary Tasks to Auto Scheduled, the system will add two milestone tasks immediately after the Summary Task. These two milestone tasks indicate the original Start Date, and original Finish Date of the Summary Task. The constraint for these dates will be set to Must Start On.
- The system deletes Inactive tasks.
- Finally, any tasks the user may have manually formatted with Strikethrough font formatting will be removed.
With the changes noted above, I would personally do most, if not all, of the conversions prior to the save as. This way I am in control of the changes that are made to the schedule.
Have a great day!
-Dan