MS Project automatically adds a day to successor task

[Piotr]

Helo everyone,

I have an issue with the project schedule.
I have Auto-schedule option ON. When I add new task (e.g. Task X+1) to my schedule, which is a successor of Task X, MS Project “adds” extra day in my schedule. Task X lasts 1 day, so Task X+1 should begin on 02 Jan 2015, but MS Project automatically sets a start date on 03 Jan 2015 so overally, my tasks last 3 days instead of 2. I enclose example below to illustrate the issue:

Task X – duration: 1d – start date: 01 Jan 2015 – finish date: 02 Jan 2015
Task X+1 – duration: 1d – start date: 03 Jan 2015 – finish date: 04 Jan 2015

Do you have any suggestions or ideas how to solve this problem?

[Tom Boyle]

Piotr,
This appears to be classic behavior when you have a mismatch between your calendar worktimes and the default hours per day setting. In Project, all durations are stored in minutes. Any time you enter a duration in “days”, Project will automatically translate that value into minutes using the hours-per-day setting (x60 minutes/hour). Under default conditions, your 1-day task takes 8 working hours to complete, but if you have shortened your standard workday from 8 hours to 7 hours, then your “1-day” task beginning on the early morning of 03-Jan will spill-over 1 hour into 04-Jan. The situation is complicated if you have manually entered any dates at all, since the default workday start and finish times may not match your calendars.

Go to settings and choose a date format that displays the time of day. Then all should become clear.

[Author]

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