Hi,

lot of my Blog readers are asking how to link Tasks between two or more different Projects, and how to manage them.

I will show you how to do it with MS PROJECT 2019!

As usual, first I will create two simple Projects, and I will save them to my Desktop as Project1.mpp, and Project2.mpp:

and:

To make a connection between Tasks among different Project, you should save them first. Let’s say that Task 3 from Project 1 should be predecessor to Task 4 from Project 2, and Task 1 from Project 1 should be Predecessor to Task 6 from Project 2. To get that you should double click to Task 4 (and Task 6 accordingly) from Project 2 and:

As you can see you should write in the ID column: Project name from which you wish a have predecessor, then backslash then Task ID form this Project (and in my example this is third Task from Project 1). When you click on OK button you will get:

To connect Task 1 from Project with  Task 6 from Project 2, you should do the same thing, and you will get:

The final result is:

Light gray Task are external Tasks.

OK! That was a part about creating dependencies. Now, how to manage them in the easiest way?

You can see that you can, and should, use this option to see all external predecessors (and successors) on one screen only. Let’s say that you want to “break” connections between Task 6 from Project 2 and Task 1 from Project 1. You can do it easy, like this:

So, you should first select external predecessor, and then delete the link, and you will get:

External Task is gone!

Finally, if you look at the Project 1, Task 4 from Project 2 is successor  of Task 3 form Project 1:

To conclude, when you manage multiple Projects and they are “connected”, use this feature to handle your external successors and predecessors in a right way.

Regards!