Hi,
I will show you what happens if you change default start time in MS PROJECT 2013, and how to get right Project Start date. First I will set Date format so I can see hours. Click on File Tab, then choose Options:
Now I am going to create new Project:
and I’m going to File Tab again, and I will choose Options, and then:
Ok, so I want that First Project Task starts at 07:30 in the morning. I am going to change working time:
Ok, now I will add two Tasks:
As you can see, Task 1 is going to start at Monday 08:00, and finish at Thursday, 18.6.2015 at 08:00, and Task 2 is going to start at same Thursday as well, and it will be finished at Monday, 22.6.2015 at 08:00. Why? Why does not my Task 1 start at 07:30? Because I didn’t change the Project Start time, and you can see it here:
I will change it now:
and I will get:
Everything is Perfect now! What if I set up that my Default start time is at 09:00 instead of 7:30, and Default end Time is 17:00 instead of 16:00, and I set up working time in calendar according to this? When I add first Task to the Project, this new Task, and the Project start time will be at 09:00 instead of 07:30! If you do not believe me, try it.
So, to conclude, if you change your Project start time earlier than it was set up before, change your Project start time as well. And, btw, check your Project Start time in any new Project, just to be sure that it will start when it is supposed to start.
Regards!
Nenad Trajkovski 
I have just now realized why I had fractions in the duration of my tasks. Thanks a lot Nenad!
But now I have discovered that I have a problem in the start & finis time of most of the tasks, and unfortunately they are so many. I do not know how to fix this. I set up the time in the three locations as you guided here but the wrong time has not changed. Do I need to fix it one by one? I wish your answer will not be “YES” 😦
Well,
to help you you should give me further details about where exactly is the problem with your Start and Finish date in your Tasks
Thank you Nenad for your attention and sorry for not replying to your message. The notification email of your reply was stored in my Gmail ‘Social’ section which I do not check regularly because I used to receive unimportant emails in such ‘Social’ and ‘Promotion’ sections of Gmail.
Anyway, I thank you once more for your attention.
I am giving below an example of the time error I got in ‘Start’ and ‘Finish’ columns after I had followed the steps you illustrate in this valuable post.
Task Name Duration Start Finish
Task 1 5 days Tue 11/01/16 4:00 pm Tue 11/8/16 11:00 AM
Task 2 10 days Tue 11/01/16 4:00 pm Mon 11/14/16 3:00 pm
Task 3 5 days Mon 11/14/16 3:00 pm Mon 11/21/16 10:00 AM
All tasks in my schedule are full-day tasks. Each task should start at 8am and finish at 5pm. But because I did not follow the steps I have learned here in your post, I did not notice the time when I was creating my schedule. Now after I had followed your steps and set the default and working start and end time to 8 am and 5 pm, I found that Start & Finish time of ALL my activities are incorrect as shown in the examples above. My question was, how to correct Start and Finish time of activities to match the default time I have set? I know that your steps should be done before creating the schedule. But this is not my case. And it is so difficult to re-create the schedule because it contains a lot of activities some of which are complete (100%) and some are in progress.
Read my post from 3/1/2017
Hi Nenad,
I just found the answer to my previous question in this post … thanks anyways!
https://amagard.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/planing-by-the-hour-in-ms-project/
Hi,
I have the following issue … I have a resource with an 8-hour working day. I assign him a task starting 9:00 am with a duration of 3 hours. I also assign him a task starting 10:00 am with duration 1 hour. Project does not flag it as an overallocation, I guess it’s because it does not go beyond the 8 hour restriction for a working day. But there is a conflict with the tasks since both have to be performed by the same resource at the same time. Is there a way to have Project indicate this conflict?
Thank you,
– J. Xavier Atero
Read this: https://ntrajkovski.com/2016/06/10/how-to-show-resource-overallocation-within-one-day-in-ms-project-2016/
Hi,
I want to set the start time of my project to an indefinite time. Could you please explain how I can set start date as t0? Following tasks finish date should appear as (t0+x).
Thanks,
Irem
You can not do it!
Hi, Thank you very much for your tutorial. I’ve been trying to change the proyect start date of a proyect where I have already defined the tasks, milestones and preceding task. When I change the starting date in the “project information” button and even after using the comand “move project” of the same options menu, the starting date is not updated in any of the tasks. Is there any way to achieve this ?
It should work! Can you send me your mpp file to nenad@ntrajkovski.com
Awesome! I have spent the past couple of hours trying to figure this out. Thank you! Once again the MS provided online help doesn’t mention this anywhere