Tips on Updating a Project Interim Plan in MS Project

After an interim plan has been saved, its data is available in the Start and Finish fields. As your project progresses, you can choose to save additional interim plans (up to 10) or you can update an existing interim plan. To update an existing interim plan, follow these steps:

1. Using the Gantt Chart, in the Task Name field, select the tasks that have baseline or interim data that need updating. (If you are updating baseline or interim data for the entire project, skip this step.) You can select up to 10 tasks at one time.
2. Choose Tools, choose Tracking, and then choose Set Baseline.
3. Select Set Interim Plan.
4. In the Copy drop-down list, select the data that you are copying.
5. In the Into drop-down list, select the interim plan that you want to update.
6. Under For, do one of the following: a) Select the Entire Project option to update the interim data for the entire project. b) Select the Selected Tasks option to update the data for only the tasks that you selected in the Gantt Chart view.
7. Under Roll Up Baselines, select how you want the updated baseline data to be rolled up: a) Select the To All Summary Tasks check box if you want updated baseline data for the selected tasks to be rolled up to the corresponding summary tasks. Otherwise, baseline data for summary tasks might not accurately reflect subtask baseline data. b) Select the From Subtasks Into Selected Summary Task(s) check box if you want baseline data for selected summary tasks to be updated to reflect both the deletions of subtasks and added tasks for which you previously saved baseline values. c) Select both check boxes if you want to update both subtasks and their summary tasks.
8. Click OK.
9. Click Yes to overwrite the existing saved data.

Finally, to make room for additional interim plans or simply remove previously created interim plans (particularly when working on projects with long durations), follow these steps:

1. If you want to delete the interim plan only for a specific set of tasks, using the Gantt Chart, in the Task Name field, select the tasks that have interim data that needs clearing. (If you are updating baseline or interim data for the entire project, skip this step.) You can select up to 10 tasks at one time.
2. Choose Tools, Tracking, and Clear Baseline.
3. Next to For, do one of the following: a) Click Entire Project to delete the interim data for the entire project. b) Click Selected tasks to delete the data for only the tasks that you selected in the Gantt Chart view.
4. In the Clear Baseline dialog box, use the Clear Interim Plan drop-down list to locate the interim plan to clear.
5. Click OK.

With permission from Microsoft Press, this article content was excerpted from the book, Managing Projects with Microsoft Office Project 2007 (Self-Paced Training Kit for Exam 70-632).