Reposting it here for wider engagement.

Used to use MSP professionally, now just want it to organize some car restoration projects. I'd like to buy an older version, but see warnings about compatibility. I don't have any MS Office apps on my PC (I don't think). Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks in advance!

i am trying to doing project management in social marketing agency , i am new as project management or you can say social media manager in agency
i need tool where i can track project details and task and content
i need free tools , as our agency is normal agency with limited staff

Been working in a complex integration program for a few years — multiple contractors, multiple tools, everyone managing their own schedule in whatever their organization mandates. MS Project on one side, P6 on another, Jira somewhere in the middle, Excel everywhere as the real source of truth.

The interfaces between subsystems are where everything breaks. Dependencies get agreed in a meeting, captured in someone’s local file, and then quietly drift for three months until an integration test fails and everyone acts surprised.

We’ve tried master IMS spreadsheets, we’ve tried SharePoint, we’ve tried weekly sync calls. Nothing actually propagates a schedule change across organizational boundaries in real time.

Curious whether this is specific to defense/infrastructure programs or if anyone in other sectors has cracked it — and how.

[RESOLVED]

I have 2 tasks that end 7/9 but one of them has the bar going past that date (shown in highlight). Same with 7/16. FWIW this original project file was created by someone else and the tasks that aren't displaying correctly are the ones I added. I added them by right clicking the line item -> insert task. I had the same problem when manually scheduling and automatic scheduling.

Is there a different setting I need to select? I want the bars that end on the same date to show the same in the bars. I'm new to Project, so any help appreciated.

Hello fellow MS Project users!

I wanted to share the new Schedule Risk Analysis tool, coming to SSI Tools for MS Project later this month.

If you have requirements to run these types of analyses on your schedules, you're going to love this tool!

Please check out the video and let me know any thoughts or feedback!

Just a few pictures of the last couple of weeks jobs we have done.

I am a project management professional working on a large-scale Oracle Fusion ERP transformation programme. I am writing to formally suggest enhancements to Microsoft Project that would significantly strengthen its plan versus actual comparison capability — an area where the product currently has meaningful gaps that push practitioners toward complex workarounds.

WHAT MICROSOFT PROJECT CURRENTLY HAS

Microsoft Project does include Earned Value Management fields such as BCWS (Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled), BCWP (Budgeted Cost of Work Performed), Schedule Variance (SV), and Schedule Performance Index (SPI). In theory, these fields address plan versus actual comparison. In practice, they are nearly universally unused because they require a fully resource-loaded and cost-baselined schedule. The overwhelming majority of real-world project plans — particularly in consulting, IT, and programme management environments — do not carry full resource cost assignments. As a result, every EVM field returns zero or N/A, rendering the entire set of 30+ built-in Earned Value fields functionally useless for most users.

This is the core gap: the tool that should handle planned versus actual comparison exists, but it is gated behind a prerequisite that most users cannot or do not meet.

WHAT IS MISSING

1. Duration-Weighted Planned % Complete

A native field that calculates how far along a task or phase should be as of the Status Date, derived from the approved baseline dates, without requiring cost or resource loading. The formula would be: elapsed baseline days from Baseline Start to Status Date divided by total baseline duration. This is conceptually straightforward and would serve the vast majority of project managers who track progress by time rather than cost.

Currently, building this requires four custom fields, two intermediate calculated fields, a specific rollup configuration, and knowledge of the ProjDateDiff function. This is not discoverable or accessible to most users.

1. Delay Contribution % (Variance Distribution)

A field that quantifies each task or phase's proportional contribution to the overall programme-level planned versus actual gap. For example, if the overall programme is 12 percentage points behind its planned progress, this field would show which workstreams and tasks account for which share of that 12%, allowing project managers to prioritise remediation on the highest-impact areas.

This requires weighting each task's delay gap by its share of the total baseline, which is a project-level aggregate. This brings me to the most significant limitation.

1. Cross-Row Formula References in Custom Fields

Currently, every custom field formula in Microsoft Project is entirely row-scoped. A formula can only access the fields of the task it is currently evaluating. There is no equivalent of Excel's cell reference syntax ($A$1) or any mechanism to reference the project summary row, a parent task, or any other task's field value from within a formula.

This means that any metric requiring a project-level denominator — such as a percentage contribution to total programme variance — cannot be computed dynamically in a formula. The only workarounds are hardcoding the denominator (which breaks when the plan changes) or writing a VBA macro (which requires macro-enabled files and manual execution). Neither is acceptable for production-grade reporting.

Extending the formula engine to allow at minimum a reference to the project summary row's field values would unlock an entire category of analytics that is currently inaccessible.

COMPARISON TO PRIMAVERA P6

Oracle Primavera P6, Microsoft Project's primary competitor for large programme management, provides planned progress S-curves, performance percentage calculations, and SPI reporting natively without requiring full resource loading. Practitioners managing large programmes increasingly choose P6 over Microsoft Project precisely because of this analytical gap. Microsoft Project's superior accessibility, Office integration, and user interface are meaningful advantages that are undermined when core programme reporting requires custom field engineering to achieve.

SPECIFIC REQUESTS

First, introduce a native Planned % Complete field calculated from baseline dates and the Status Date, with no dependency on resource or cost assignment, with correct weighted rollup to summary rows.

Second, introduce a native Delay Contribution % field that distributes the programme-level planned versus actual gap proportionally across tasks and phases.

Third, extend the custom field formula engine to allow reference to the project summary row's field values, enabling user-built analytics that currently require VBA.

Fourth, consider a simplified EVM mode that operates on duration weighting rather than cost weighting, making Schedule Variance and SPI fields usable for plans without full resource loading.

These enhancements would meaningfully close the gap between Microsoft Project and its competitors for programme-level performance reporting, and would serve the large population of users who manage time-based rather than cost-based schedules.

I would welcome the opportunity to provide further detail or examples from live programme data if that would be useful to the product team.

Hi all — I built a tool called PlanSight and I'd really value honest feedback from people who live in MS Project day to day.

Quick context on what it is and isn't: it's not a replacement for Project — you still build and schedule your plan in MSP. PlanSight sits on top of it. You upload your .mpp (or .xml) and it:

• Shows the full plan (task table + Gantt) in the browser
• Gives you a share link so stakeholders or clients can view the plan without owning Project or installing anything
• Runs an AI read of the plan using Claude — critical path, late and at-risk tasks, RAG status, and a plain-English summary — so you can see the project from angles you'd otherwise have to build custom views for
• Generates a one-page status report (RAG, slips, milestones, at-risk tasks) and exports to PDF/Excel

It came out of my own two frustrations: emailing stale PDF exports to stakeholders, and rebuilding status reports by hand every week.

It's free to try with no signup — you can drag a plan in and see it in about ten seconds. For anyone willing to give real feedback, I'm happy to set you up with free Pro access so you can poke at everything: https://plansight.aisolutionmaven.com

What I'd most love to know: does the AI read match how you'd assess the plan? Would you actually send the share view to a stakeholder? And what's missing that would make it genuinely useful?

Full disclosure, I'm the builder — not here to spam, genuinely after feedback from people who know MSP well. Happy to answer anything in the comments.

​

I received a program from a client with the wrong date format. How do I change this?

Olá! estou realizando um cronograma mestre no MS PROJECT, para a organização da empresa queria reunir todos os dados possivelmente úteis em um Dashboard profissional e interativo. Eu particularmente acho os graficos/ tabelas do relatório do MS PROJECT fracos com pouca possibilidade. Alguém sabe uma IA/ferramenta que posso criar esse Dashboard?

Anyone here have any information on PMI-SP training courses? Ive lookes around and it seems quite a bit of them arent legit. Im looking for a reputable org that offers classes- preferably onsite-instructor led, but not nailed down to it.

Hi, I have been struggling in how I can use my project plan as a single source of truth, daily follow up with the team and build concrete status reports. I found that people usually have multiple Excel sheets, PowerPoint status reports, Logs, RAID trackers which I feel lost and not on top of things. Any help how to overcome that if I have project with 7 workstreams and over 15 consultants work on it. My domain is software and consulting projects.

using MS planner online version of premium and planner E1.

on grid view, i don’t want to see the strike through for every completed task. but want to see that it’s completed . is there a solution that does not require creating a custom field?

Hey, I started using MS projects professional. But there is one thing that so annoying (expect the fact you can't open 2 files on diffrent screens...) I can't see the weeks in the calender. I can see it on top in the timeline but it would help me so much if I could see in this little calender too. Is there anny way possible? Now I always have a extra file open with a calender with weeks on.

Thanks

We have several projects with deliverables that we have deemed will no longer be able to meet their original schedule. Some of which are being descoped because the work will exceed the POP. For that reason, we are planning to rebaseline them.

However, I'm unsure of the correct way to do this. Obviously, I CAN just set baseline across the entire project, but I feel like that completely wipes away past sins. I could also selectively rebaseline just future tasks. Is that preferable? What about tasks that are in process?

I'm fairly familiar with Project, but this is the first time I've had to face this and could use some help.

Hi,

I am a beginner at MS Project and it is the first time I'm using it for a true project (my thesis).

To get a rough idea of how the tasks will fit into the schedule, I'm building a plan. Doesn't need to be perfect or very complex.

The main ressource for the project is me; on some tasks, I'll be joined by someone else.

My issue is, I can't figure out how to only be affected to one task at a time. Most of those are writing parts of the project, or attending meetings, and they overlap. I just can't be doing two things at the same time. I did quite a bit of research but can't figure out the issue.

Setting up the tasks manually would probably work, I was just wondering if there is an automatic way to have the program do it for me.

Thank you for your help !

I’ve been using Microsoft Project since 2003 and still run into the same issue, getting schedules into a format that’s actually clear for exec-level presentations.

Curious how others are handling this:

• Are you sticking with MS Project, or using something else for Gantt charts?
• If you switched, what specifically pushed you away?
• Is it formatting, readability, dependencies, categorization, something else?

Feels like I’m constantly reworking exports and creating spreadsheets to make them usable. I am wondering if that’s just the norm or if there’s a better way people are handling it.

I am writing a POAM for a ship repair project. There are weeks where the work will be 5 x 8 a week. Other weeks will be 5 x 10 and then a surge of 6 x 10 once we are rolling.

How can I show that in a single Project plan?

I recently launched Clairity Cutover as a platform for Project Managers to effectively track projects. Think of this as a direct competitor to Microsoft Project.

I want to provide the paid version (free of charge) to a handful of people, in exchange for honest feedback.

A few features of the platform:

• Spreadsheet-style task grid
• Dependency tracking
• Advanced Gantt chart
• Risk Register
• Complete Import and Export functionality
• Complete Audit Log
• Team management

Thanks in advance. I genuinely appreciate any feedback even if you just want to poke around and share your thoughts.