Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Setting the Project Start Date

Projects rarely start on the day you create your Microsoft Project file. You usually have some business to take care of before the work begins, like obtaining project plan approvals or lining up funding. The date on which you plan to start the project is the setting you’re most likely to change in any Project file.

Tip

To ensure that you set the project start date and other key file options, you can tell Project to ask you for that information when you create a new file. Choose File→Options, and then, on the left side of the Project Options dialog box, choose Advanced. In the General section, turn on the “Prompt for project info for new projects” checkbox, and then click OK to close the dialog box. Exit and restart Project. After that, as soon as you create a new project, the Project Information dialog box appears.

Here are the steps:

1. With the Project file open and active, in the Project tab’s Properties section, click Project Information.

   The Project Information dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 5-4. If you created the file from scratch, Project sets the “Start date” box to today’s date. If you create a new Project file from a template or an existing project, the “Start date” box contains the start date that was set in the original file.

   

   Figure 5-4. Out of the box, the “Schedule from” box is set to Project Start Date, which is almost always what you want. ...