How to Combine Two Schedules in MS Project? 2 Easy Steps

When working in Microsoft Project 2016, you may come to a point where splitting or consolidating projects is necessary. When this occurs, knowing how to combine two schedules in MS Project is beneficial to maintaining each of your projects for combined or individual use.

In this guide, I’ll explain how to combine projects in Microsoft Project in two easy steps.

You’ll learn:

• How to Combine Two Schedules in MS Project?
• How to Link Projects in MS Project?
• CLOSING THOUGHTS

Related:

How To Use Wbs Code In Microsoft Project 2013?

How To Open An Mpp File Without Microsoft Project? 3 Best Methods

Subtasks And Summary Tasks In Microsoft Project

How to Combine Two Schedules in MS Project?

One of the biggest challenges that may occur in the splitting of a large project into a number of individual projects or subprojects, has to do with the restoration of any links that existed in the original program or project.

Note: It’s a good idea to decide whether you are going to split a project or program into a number of separate files as early as possible to eliminate the amount of work you will have to do later on.

Let’s take a look at the Charity Event we created in Exercise 1.

First, we will open CharityEvent_All. You will notice that we get a notification that says: “This file shares resources from a resource pool. What do you want to do?”

You have two options

• “Open resource pool to view assignments across all sharer files.”
• “Do not open other files”

Keep in mind that if you open this project on its own, you will be able to see the list of recourses that it uses, but you won’t be looking at the resource pool of all the shared projects. This you won’t get an accurate picture of resource usage.

So, let’s go with the first option.

Note: You don’t need to have every project open to see how their resources are being used on the Resource Sheet in Resource Usage View. You, however, need to have the resource pool open.

Before we move forward, we do want to insert the Sports Day project into the All project.

Now, go your Gantt Chart > Select Empty Row > Project Tab > Insert Sub Project > Insert Related Sub Project > Select Sports Day > Insert

Note that when you insert something into the table it assumes the indentation of the task above. Out dent the task so that it isn’t a part of the Summary tab.

How to Link Projects in MS Project?

One of the first things you will notice is that the scheduling and ID numbers are off. We will need to re-establish dependencies for the entire project.

For example, task 47 Perform Risk Assessment. Has a predecessor of task 10 which is actually Book Venue.

Select task 10, scroll down to Perform Risk Assessment in our Sports Day subproject and create the equivalent link.

Now we can see that some of the tasks in our subproject are correctly scheduled.

You will notice a change in the way that the task predecessor is represented within our subproject. Because the predecessor for task 1 in the subproject is in a different project, the predecessor is more complex.

Where we’re dealing with dependencies between projects, you will notice the Project Path, the Project File Name and the Task ID within the project as part of the dependency.

Suggested Reads:

How To Change A Task Duration In Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project 2019: Linking Tasks And Dependencies

CLOSING THOUGHTS

That is everything about how to combine two schedules in MS Project. If you have any doubts regarding this or any other MS Project feature please let us know in the comments.

For more free training resources on Microsoft Project take a look at:

• Free Microsoft Project Training Course
• Microsoft Project 2019 – Ribbon and Toolbar
• How to Open an MPP file without Microsoft Project

Take a look at the full range of Microsoft Project courses available from Simon Sez IT.

Get our complete Microsoft Project 2016 video training course. Click here to learn more. >>

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!