Microsoft Project Professional 2010 enables you to effectively ‘cancel’ a task or group of tasks, however keep an original record of the task(s) within the project plan.
This is called ‘Inactivating’ the task(s). An individual task or group of tasks remains within the project plan however does not affect resource availability, the project schedule, or how other tasks within the project plan are scheduled.
Why would you want to inactivate a task or group of tasks?
To illustrate, it can help you model the effects of schedule or resource constraints on the overall project without deleting tasks permanently. Additionally, inactive tasks remain within the project plan, providing a record of cancelled tasks and enabling you to reactivate them if circumstances do change on the project.
Please Note:
Inactivation is not a good way to archive completed tasks, because it could have unanticipated effects on the remaining schedule. Instead, it is more technically correct to mark the tasks as completed.
Within Microsoft Project 2010 Professional, to ‘Inactivate’ a task or group of tasks:
1. On the View tab, in the Task Views group, click Gantt Chart.
2. In the table portion of the view, select the number of task(s) such as a phase of work for example ‘Sales’ as shown below you wish to inactivate.
3. On the Task tab, in the Schedule group, click Inactivate.
The Inactive Task(s) stay present within the task list, but the text is dimmed and has a ‘strikethrough’ line present through across the task(s) information.
4. To reactivate an individual task or group of tasks, select the inactive task(s), and then click Inactivate.
TIP: The ability to ‘Inactivate’ a task is a feature ONLY available with Microsoft Project 2010 Professional.
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