MS Project 2003 - Splitting Tasks

[RichardMGreen]

Hi all

I'm trying to schedule in all my work using Project 2003 and I've hit a bit of a brick wall.
I have regular meetings and I need to include these in my schedule and split my workload around them.
Apart from splitting each task individually which is going to get very tedious, is there a way of Project doing this automatically to save me doing it manually?

Thanks in advance.

Richard

 

[stoconnor]

Assuming that the meetings have nothing to do with the workload you are scheduling and you don't need to show them or the hours...

Try putting them in as non-working time in your resource calendar? This is assuming that you are assigning yourself as a resource?

Also assuming that you are using a standalone (not project server-based) file, you also have the option of editing the global calendar this way. Which would help if you aren't actually assigning resources.

Just some thoughts.

 

[RichardMGreen]

Thanks for that.
I'm also trying to get the Gantt chart to visually split the tasks around non-work time as well (i.e. weekends).
Any ideas?

 

[stoconnor]

It won't show it on the Gantt chart very well, but Project essentially schedules for "working hours" only. If the bar crosses a weekend, (play with it via dragging the right side of a task bar over a known weekend, you'll see it first-hand) it won't visually show the weekend, but no working hours are scheduled either. For more detail, zoom in so you can identify the days better. (default view will shade the non-working hours if you are zoomed in close enough) If you drag from a Friday to a Monday, it won't stop on Saturday or Sunday, It'll either bump the bar back to Friday, or skip all the way into Monday.

It's not perfect, it's Microsoft Project. It's loaded with quirks. We only use it at work because the next level is out of our price range and it's very helpful for our Operations office in generating potential workload reports.

You do have the option of manually splitting if you "must" see the non working time, but if you make an adjustment to a primary task duration, the subsequent splits will fail.. miserably. Better off just letting Project do it's thing.

 

[RichardMGreen]

Looks like I'll have to put up with the "quirks" of another MS piece of software, then.
I'm not going to go through God knows how many projects and split them round the weekends, meetings, etc.

Thanks for all the info.