Assigning Actual Dates Shortcuts for P6 Beginners

Are you new to Primavera P6 and looking for ways to reduce the number of times you have to click through prompts to assign actual dates? The shortcuts shown in this quick tip might save you about 10 seconds per date change.

Ticking 1 instead of 2 Checkboxes

When an activity is 100% complete, we normally use Activity Details form to mark it as 100% complete by first ticking the Started checkbox

and then ticking the Finished checkbox to mark the activity as 100% complete.

A quicker way of marking an activity as 100% complete is to tick the Finished checkbox and P6 will automatically tick the Started checkbox too. (This works based on the logic that an activity must have started before it can finish).

Quickly Navigate through Date Prompts

Assuming we have marked an activity as started and we want to change the Actual Start date from 23-Aug-99 to 15-Jun-99. Usual step is to click the date (arrow 1) and then navigate to the desired month using the backward button (arrow 2).

A quicker way to navigate to a date in another month is to click on the current month's button (arrow 3) and this changes the date display from month to year.

Click on the desired month (arrow 4) and this changes the date display back to month. Now double-click on the date (15-Jun-99 in this example) and the Actual Date  will now reflect the desired date. (If desired month is in another year, while the date display is still on year, use the backward or forward to navigate to the desired year before changing to the desired month)