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Stretching Activity durations

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Alex CostarasMember for 21 years 4 months
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Is there a way of stretching an activity’s duration in MSP. I’ve got a test activity that I want to span the gap between the earliest and latest equipment deliveries, but not as a hammock.

e.g.
......|Act A ======|
........................|Act B ==========|
Act C ===========================

What I need is for the duration of Act C to fluctuate as the predecessors change. But I want it to be a Task, not a summary bar or hammock
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  1. 0
    Alexandre Faulx-Briole ·
    #1
    Hello,
    No version of MS Project knows what a hammock is.
    It is possible to mimmick a hammock task by creating a paste-link between the predecessor and successor and the task itself.
    Now, if you want a span task which is not a hammock nor a summary task, what exactly do you want?
    Alexandre
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  2. 0
    Zhang Haixiang ·
    #2
    1. right click start date of actA, then click "Copy cell"
    2. right click start date of actC, then click "paste special...", then click "Paste link"

    do the same for finish date

    hope this helps
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  3. 0
    Alex Costaras ·
    #3
    Thanks zhang,

    That did exactly what I wanted - you’re a star!
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  4. 0
    Alexandre Faulx-Briole ·
    #4
    Alex,
    you know, that’s EXACTLY the way to mimmick a hammock task in MS Project !
    Alexandre
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  5. 0
    Sukumaran Subaramaniyan ·
    #5
    Create 2 dummy milestones. Link the earliest date and latest date to each milestone. Indent the milestone to create summary bar.

    Highlight summary bar. Go to Format > Bar > Bar Shape. Remove start & end shapes. Change the middle bar to Task bar shape. Click OK and hide subtask.

    Now when the predecessors change the duration for the above bar will fluctuate.

    Regards.

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  6. 0
    Will Russell ·
    #6
    Using the second technique as described by Sukumaran (very impressed with that by the way) you can link the start of all the delivery tasks to the first milestone and the finish of all the delivery tasks to the second milestone then it won’t matter which delivery is first or which delivery is last, the testing task will always show the duration over that whole period.
    Will
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  7. 0
    Will Russell ·
    #7
    Me and my big mouth!! Of course you would only link the start of the first delivery task to the first milestone....doh!!

    Will
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