Progress Updating on MS Project

MSP is a completely different animal to Primavera products.

MPS essentially ignores the data date and schedules the end date of an inprogress activity from the actual start + the duration and ignores the % Complete and remaining Duration which is always linked to the % Complete.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia
Planning and Scheduling Training Manual & Book Publishers, Consulting and Training
www.eh.com.au

"trying to update progress in MS project by filling the actual start column, but it changes the planned start date to the actual start date and the whole schedule."

Why is this a problem rather than completely logical?
A Task can either have a planned start date or an actual date, but not both, or different. If a task has an actual start date, this supersedes any planned start date, so the planned start date takes the value of the actual start date.

Also, it pays to remember that the left hand end of the bar of the task does not even represent the "planned" start date, but only the earliest possible start date.
You can more or less safely intend or plan to start anytime after that up to the latest possible start date, ie within the float. I only mention this because it seems to be a common misinterpretation that the early start is always the "planned" or "intended" or "scheduled" or even "promised" start date. Of course, it is best, if possible, to do tasks as soon as possible, even if they have a lot of float (don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today), but the whole point of the critical path method is to know which tasks you can relax about and which which are serious time-wise.

Got the message guys.
I appreciate. Just like Early start and Actual start in Primavera, I was mistaken the planned start date to the Baseline start. Like I said not use to MSP.

Cheers all

Kunle