- On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.
- In the Task Name field, select the task you want to update.
You cannot update actual start and finish dates for a summary task (summary task: A task that is made up of subtasks and summarizes those subtasks. Use outlining to create summary tasks. Project automatically determines summary task information [such as duration and cost] by using information from the subtasks.).
- On the Tools menu, point to Tracking, and then click Update Tasks.
- Under Actual, type or select the dates in the Start and Finish boxes.
Notes
- Entering an actual start date (start date: The date when a task is scheduled to begin. This date is based on the duration, calendars, and constraints of predecessor and successor tasks. A task's start date is also based on its own calendars and constraints.) or actual finish date (finish date: The date that a task is scheduled to be completed. This date is based on the task's start date, duration, calendars, predecessor dates, task dependencies, and constraints.) for a task changes the corresponding scheduled or planned date for that task. Baseline (baseline plan: The original project plans [up to 11 per project] used to track progress on a project. The baseline plan is a snapshot of your schedule at the time that you save the baseline and includes information about tasks, resources, and assignments.) dates, however, are not affected by changes you make to the actual or scheduled dates. To compare baseline and scheduled dates, from the View menu, point to Table and then click Variance.
- If you enter an actual finish date for a task, Microsoft Office Project 2003 calculates its percent complete (percent complete: A field that you use to enter or display how much of a task has been completed. This value is expressed as the percentage of the task duration that has been completed.) to be 100%.
- If a number of tasks started and finished on time, you can set the actual start and actual finish information for all of those tasks at once. In the Task Name field, hold down CTRL and click the tasks that started and finished on time. On the Tools menu, point to Tracking, and then click Update Project. Click Update work as complete through, type or select a date, and then next to For, click Selected tasks.
