Deleting and relinking tasks
When you have a sequence of tasks linked together, you might sometimes want to delete a task and relink its predecessor and successor tasks to maintain the link logic. For example, if your project is under pressure, you might be asked to miss out Phase 2 and go straight from Phase 1 to Phase 3. You can do this automatically.
To delete a task and relink its predecessors and successor tasks automatically:
- Select a task that has both incoming and outgoing links, for example the second task in the illustration below.
- On the Home tab, in the Schedule group, click the Add/Delete Links dropdown and select Delete and Relink. The task is deleted and a new link is drawn connecting the deleted task's predecessor and successor tasks:
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Before delete and relink |
After delete and relink |
Deleting and relinking progressed tasks
When you delete and relink a task that has partial progress, the result depends on whether you delete the completed or the uncompleted part of the task. The different results are illustrated using the task sequence shown below, where the middle task has partial progress:
When you delete the completed part, the uncompleted part is not deleted and the new incoming link goes into that task:
When you delete the uncompleted part, the whole task (both completed and uncompleted parts) is deleted:
Notes on deleting and relinking tasks
- When you delete and relink a task whose predecessor and successor tasks are not in the same view, a link is drawn connecting the tasks, but you may not be able to see it depending on which tasks are displayed in your current view.
- If both the incoming and outgoing links on the deleted task share the same link category, then this category is applied to the new link drawn between the predecessor and successor tasks. Otherwise, the new link uses the default link category.
- When you delete and relink a task whose links had lead/lag periods, any lead/lag time incoming or outgoing from that task is lost. However, any lead/lag time from the predecessor task and to the successor task is preserved:
Before delete and relink
After delete and relink
- You can delete and relink several tasks simultaneously, for example if you want to remove more than one task from the same linked sequence or if you want to remove a number of tasks from several different linked sequences throughout the project. Simply select all the tasks that you want to delete and relink, then select the Delete and Relink command.
- When a summary task