The duration of an assignment unexpectedly decreases in Project 2003

In Microsoft Office Project 2003, you find that the duration of an assignment unexpectedly decreases. When this problem occurs, the remaining work for the assignment changes to a shorter duration. This situation may cause the resource to be overallocated. Additionally, this situation may cause availability information for the resource to be incorrect.

This problem occurs when the following conditions are true:

• The project manager accepts updates that are submitted by resources for fixed-duration tasks in Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003.
• The updates for the fixed-duration tasks contain days that do not have actual work and days that have actual work.

In this scenario, the finish date for the assignment is incorrectly rescheduled to an earlier date.

This problem was first fixed in a hotfix that is now contained in a service pack. If you installed the latest Project 2003 service pack, you do not have to install the hotfix.

Service pack information

This problem is corrected in Project 2003 Service Pack 3. To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Project 2003. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix information

How to obtain the hotfix

This issue is fixed in the Microsoft Office Project 2003 post-Service Pack 2 Hotfix Package that is dated May 30, 2006. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Note By applying this hotfix, you prevent the problem in the future assignments. However, the hotfix does not fix assignments that already experience the problem. To resolve this issue for assignments that already experience the problem, follow these steps:

1. Start Project 2003, log on to Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 as the administrator or as the project manager, and then open the project.
2. On the View menu, click Task Usage.
3. Locate the problem assignment, and then note the value in the Work field.
4. In the Finish field, change the date to the correct finish date for the assignment.
   
   Note The finish date for the assignment is typically, but not always, the same date as the finish date for the task.
5. In the Work field, change the value to correspond with the value in the Finish field for the assignment.
6. On the Collaborate menu, point to Publish, and then click Republish Assignments.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

This problem was first corrected in Project 2003 Service Pack 3.