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How do you keep relationships when moving an activity?

10 replies [Last post]
Raul Santos
User offline. Last seen 5 years 26 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 29 Oct 2009
Posts: 44
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I have moved some activities (with Ctrl-X and pasted them with Ctrl-V) and have lost either the predecessor, successors or both. Can anyone tell me how to move activities without losing their relationships (especially in MSP 2003)?

Replies

Matthew Lin
User offline. Last seen 11 years 16 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 20 Apr 2010
Posts: 20

My normal way for referance,

"tools" - "options" - "schedule" - to remove " Autolink inserted or move tasks"

select activity you want to move, put your nonius on the activity's ID, then drag it to new location 

Evaristus Ujam
User offline. Last seen 11 years 37 weeks ago. Offline

Hi,

 

Dragging does not change the activity logic (task relationship). What it does change is the neighbourliness. What you achieve is that you have activities that belong to thesame group stay together, their precedence value or degree of relationship notwithstanding.

 

Ujam

Darren Kosa
User offline. Last seen 7 years 9 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 8 Feb 2008
Posts: 256
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Hi Raul,

Just a quick question, why cut and paste instead of drag and drop?

Regards,

Darren

Rafael Davila
User offline. Last seen 10 hours 38 min ago. Offline
Joined: 1 Mar 2004
Posts: 5229

Orozco,

I no longer have MS Project but believe there is a possibility when you select rows (NOT COLUMNS) and click CTRL-C and then CTRL-V it works differently to when you click CTRL-X and then CTRL-V. The copy-paste command sequence does not copy the relationships while the cut-paste command sequence do move relationships. Therefore in order to copy an activity with the relationships you got to use CTRL-X once and then CTRL-V twice or more, one to keep it where it was by moving it back to restore it and the rest to copy the activity along with the relationships, kind of tricky but it might work.

Maybe you can try and let our friends know.

Regards,

Rafael

Jhorbam Baena Orozco
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Joined: 14 Sep 2009
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I think that Raul only select a few columns and not all the columns when he made Ctrl-X and Ctrl-V...if you don't select the predecessors cell in the select you lost the relationship.

Mufiz Sayed
User offline. Last seen 2 years 6 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 24 Sep 2008
Posts: 59

There is little known macro in Project that will move all activities wheter linked or not.

i.e you have project that started on 01/01/04 and there is a repeat starting 01/01/05.

to get there:

Go to "view"   -  "Toolbars"   - "Analysis"

There will now be a new tool bar.

Press Adjust dates.  

And the rest is straight foreward.

You can change the date backward

 

Mufiz Sayed
User offline. Last seen 2 years 6 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 24 Sep 2008
Posts: 59

There is little known macro in Project that will move all activities wheter linked or not.

i.e you have project that started on 01/01/04 and there is a repeat starting 01/01/05.

to get there:

Go to "view"   -  "Toolbars"   - "Analysis"

There will now be a new tool bar.

Press Adjust dates.  

And the rest is straight foreward.

You can change the date backward

 

Gary Whitehead
User offline. Last seen 4 years 45 weeks ago. Offline

I've just checked and using CTR+X and CTRL+V to move task rows around in MSP2003 works and retains the links, so not sure why you are having problems.

 

One thing it may be is if the predecessors / successors you are loosing were in fact linked to the task's summary activity, rather than the task itself, and in cut and pasting you have moved the task out of that summary. -Just one of many reasons why it's a bad idea to link to/from summary tasks.

Rafael Davila
User offline. Last seen 10 hours 38 min ago. Offline
Joined: 1 Mar 2004
Posts: 5229

Try again Cut and Paste instead of Copy and Paste (I believe this is what you did), it works better than dragging, especially when activities or tasks are more than a couple of pages/screens apart, insane, error prone, dragging shall not be an option as accidents can happen inadvertly when moving the cursor.

Try multiple Paste after Cut and multiple Paste aftes Copy. If you wan to keep original activity location then multiple Paste after Cut can do the trick to restore original activity location.

Note that this is from my recall using a newer version of MS Project I no longer have.

Although I no longer use MS Project I consider that if using MS Project the upgrade to version 2010 is worth every cent.

Mike Testro
User offline. Last seen 4 weeks 4 days ago. Offline
Joined: 14 Dec 2005
Posts: 4418

Hi Raul

You have not moved an activity you have copy/pasted a task.

Try changing the dates in the start column or drag and drop to the new date zone.

But the real question is - what are you trying to achieve here?

If you move a task and keep the logic it will just revert back - if you restrain it in the new postion it will distort the logic.

So why bother?

Best regards

Mike Testro