Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Switching Tasks to Auto Scheduled Mode

So far, the work tasks in your project (but not the summary tasks) have been set to Manually Scheduled mode. If you want Project to calculate your schedule for you (see Automatically Scheduling Tasks), you need to switch some or all of your tasks to Auto Scheduled mode. That way, Project can take care of recalculating start dates, finish dates, and durations as you add more details to your plan.

Here’s how to change the tasks in the sample project to Auto Scheduled mode:

1. Click the Task Mode cell for the first summary task (which is already set to Auto Scheduled mode).

   A down arrow appears, which you can click if you want to choose either Manually Scheduled or Auto Scheduled from a drop-down menu. In addition, a fill handle (a green square), appears at the bottom right of the cell.

2. Position your cursor over the fill handle. When it changes to a + sign, drag over the Task Mode cells of all the tasks in the list.

   The icons in the Task Mode cells change to indicate that the tasks are Auto Scheduled.