A great new feature in MS PROJECT 2010 is Inactive task command. In previous versions if you had a task which you decided not to do (because you didn’t have resources, or simply you just didn’t need it) you had to delete it. And when you deleted a task it was gone forever. Now you don’t have to delete it but you can just make it inactive. This feature gives you a possibility of making inactive task active again if you change your mind. You can also see all the inactive tasks for a project review.

Here is an example:

I have five tasks:

Task 1 has a 3-day duration, Task 2 has a 5-day duration and can start when Task 1 is finished, Task 3 has a 2-day duration and can start when Task 2 is finished, Task 4 has a 1-day duration and can start when Task 3 is finished and Task 5 has a 2-day duration and can start when Task 2 is finished.

First I will make Task 1 inactive:

You can see that Tasks 2, 3, 4, and 5 are rescheduled to start on 20.04.2010 (start date of Task 1). This happened because Task 1 is no more active, and Task 2 has no predecessor, so it can start as the first task of the project when the project starts.

Now I will leave Task 1 active but I will make Task 2 inactive (Btw, if you want to make a task active again just click on Inactive button):

You can see that Task 1 remains as it was, but Tasks 3,4, and 5 are rescheduled to start on 20.04.2010 (start date of the project). This happened because Task 2 is no more active. Task 2 had Task 1 as predecessor but when I made it inactive Task 3 and Task 5 did not change their predecessor to Task 1 automatically. You must make Task 1 as a predecessor of Task 3 and Task 5 by your own:

Now I will leave Task 2 active but I will make Task 3 inactive:

You can see that Task 4 is rescheduled to start on 20.04.2010 (start date of the project). This happened because Task 3 was only predecessor of Task 4. So again, if you want to make Task 2 as a predecessor of Task 4, do it manually.

Finally I will make Task 4 and Task 5 inactive (respectively):

Since Task 4 and Task 5 are not predecessors to any task they are just inactive and nothing happens to the other tasks.

Regards,