Merging MSP Plans

Mark and Quiamco,
Better use "Insert, Project" than Copy and Paste to merge one project into another, you won’t lose any data that way; be carefull to summarize the target project at the minimum and place the cursor where you want the inserted project to take place, to avoid the inserted project to become a subsidiray task in the target project.
Alexandre

Thanks Alexandre & Quiamco,

When I copy the 5 day plan into the 24 hour plan, it decreases my durations by a third. Which isnt a surprise but I am not sure the best way forward. The fact that its a duration and not effort is the problem. I want to keep my 5 day duration as a week’s work. So in the 24 hour plan this will convert to 98 hours or 7 days and not 1.67! I would need to multiply by 21/5 but I am not sure where or how to do this.

Alexandre, I see when I insert the project it continues to link to the original file but I don’t this. I will try unclicking the "link to project" to resolve this.

deliberate mistake - 168 hours per week!

Mark,
MS Project only has ONE setup for how many hours in one day; that’s why you have this problem.
Paul Harris has designed a formula to get correct task duration whenever the task calendar is not the regular one, you will find it at
http://www.planningplanet.com/forum/forum_post.asp?fid=1&Cat=4&Top=28177
Hope it helps,
Alexandre

Hi Alexandre,

I am making slow progress. I am importing my 5 day week plan into the 24 hour shutdown plan. I think I maybe best to remove actuals first and then insert this project.

These activities are using the default calendar, "none" and I have modified Paul Harris’s formula to this:

=IIf([Task Calendar]="None",[Duration]*21/5,[Duration])

However I am not sure how to set this calculation into a number field first and then the duration field.

Also what is the "I" before the "IF"?

Mark,
You’re right, it’s best to insert a project with no actuals; Iif means "Immediate If", it is the same as the regular "If, Then, Else" in a spreadsheet app;
go to Tools, Customize, Fields, then select a duration field and create the formula in there; then in the gantt chart spreadshhet columns, replace the usual Duration field with the field that contains the formula.
Alexandre

Thanks Alexandre for your help. It’s worth keep the notes here so everyone else can use as reference.

The help above was excellent but this had led to more questions:

1. I see my formula has some inconsistancies, ie anything that’s not a week long. So rounding down will work for the majority of the time but will "rnd" work? Or is there a formula for "remainder" then I could work out exact figure.

2. The duration is calculated in days which is fine for the imported plan but I don’t want the shutdwon plan converted to days too. I can change the duration unit to either hours or days but I want to leave those in days as days and those in hours as hours.

3. In the old 5 day week plam the activities started at 8am and finished at 5pm but in the new plan the activties start and finsh at 00:00 despite 23:59 being set in options/calendar???

Look:

24 Hours 8 days 03 Apr 00:00 11 Apr 00:00
24 Hours 0 days 11 Apr 00:00 11 Apr 00:00
24 Hours 28 days 11 Apr 00:00 09 May 00:01
24 Hours 7 days 09 May 00:01 16 May 00:01

4. Why 00:01???

Thanks,

Mark

that means there’s a lag of one (1) minute FS - with one minute lag

No constraints on any of these activities!

I have been tinkering further and this now happens:

24 Hours 7 days 03 Apr 00:00 10 Apr 00:07
24 Hours 28 days 03 Apr 00:00 01 May 00:28
24 Hours 7 days 03 Apr 00:00 10 Apr 00:07
24 Hours 28 days 03 Apr 00:00 01 May 00:28

So whatever my duration, say x, then there will be x minutes!

OK I sorted this out as I am used to P3 and I had put the finish time as 23:59 and initially (1st problem) I had changing the working time just for 1 day.

Mark,
in MPS make sure your 24 hour/day calendar is open 00:00 to 00:00; it’s not the same as P3!
I don’t know why you have these strange finish date/time; can you pls send an example of this to afaulxbriole@wanadoo.fr
Thanks,
Alexandre

Hi Alexandre,

I just created a one line activity with a 28 day duration using a 24 hour calendar. You then need to change working time to 00:00-23:59. The EF date will be 00:28. Is this what you wanted? Or did you want something else?

In the end I merged plans using the formula but manually rounding down when there was a percentage.

However, I see me having this problem regularly. So would like to know how to convert a duration into an integer and back again as some of the functions like round can only be used on integers.

Cheers,

mark

Mark,
change working time to 00:00 - 00:00! 23:59 is Primavera P3, NOT MS Project; in MS Project, that makes every single day 1 minute shorter, and to work 24 hours you v will need ONE day PLUS One minute
Alexandre

I totally agree and I had worked this out 2 days ago. C’est le vie!