Drag and drop lets you replan directly on the timeline. You can pick a project up, move it, see what that does to everything around it, and put it all back if the room does not like it. Nothing is written down until you say so.
Moving a bar
Take hold of a bar and drag it left or right. The bar snaps to whole days rather than landing halfway through one, and a small label above it shows the new start and end date as you move, so you can aim for a date rather than a position.
Dragging the left or right edge of a bar changes how long it lasts instead of when it happens. One day is as short as it goes.
Everything underneath comes along
When you move something, what hangs beneath it moves by exactly the same number of days:
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Move a project and its milestones move, along with the tasks inside them.
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Move a milestone and its tasks move.
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Anything joined on by a dependency moves too, and so does whatever depends on that, all the way along the chain.
Durations are kept. A move slides work along the calendar; it never stretches or squeezes it.
One thing to check afterwards: if your projects come from the project register, tasks kept in your task list rather than under a milestone hold on to their own dates instead of following the move. See Good to know.
Nothing is saved until you say so
The moment you move your first bar, the toolbar changes. In place of the usual controls you get:
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A count of what you have moved, for example “3 objects has been moved”. It counts things, not movements, so nudging the same project four times still shows one.
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Save changes, which writes everything down.
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Cancel, which throws it all away and puts every bar back where it started.
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Rewind and Redo, which step back and forward through your moves one at a time, up to fifty of them. The buttons grey out when there is nothing left to step through.
Bars you have touched are highlighted, so you can always see what you have changed and what you have left alone.
This is what makes the view safe to use live in a meeting. Try one arrangement, rewind it, try another, and throw both away. The real plan is untouched until somebody presses Save changes. If in doubt, press Cancel.
While you are in this mode, dragging changes start and end dates on projects and milestones. Everything else about a project is still edited on the project itself.
When a milestone leaves its project
Drag a milestone or a task past the start or the deadline of the project it belongs to, and Project Overview stops to tell you:
“This action places the milestone outside the defined project timeline. This may create scheduling conflicts.”
Where it is relevant, the message also lists the tasks affected, so you can see the size of what you are about to do. Carry on and the move stands, still unsaved and still reversible. Decline and the move is rewound for you.
If you carry on and save, the project bar grows a red extension to show that its deadline is being exceeded. It is a visible reminder rather than a block, so the view lets you plan the situation you are actually in.
Bars that will not budge
Some bars cannot be dragged. Click one and it tells you why:
“Depends on ‘X’ – drag that instead”
That is deliberate. When a dependency says this piece of work follows another, the order is set by the dependency, so you move the piece that drives it and let the rest follow. If the dependency no longer reflects reality, delete it and the bar is free again. See Dependencies.
Saving
Pressing Save changes writes each moved bar to where it has ended up, counting from where it stood when you started rather than from your last small adjustment. Move a project three days out and then four more, and it is saved seven days later than it began.
You get a confirmation when it has gone through, and a clear error if anything failed.
Next: 6. Dependencies