Knowledge Base

PRJ: Circular Relationship Error When Indenting Task

Article ID: 176293

Article Last Modified on 1/22/2007

Microsoft Project 2000 Standard Edition
Microsoft Project 98 Standard Edition

This article was previously published under Q176293

SYMPTOMS

In Microsoft Project, if two tasks are linked in a predecessor/successor relationship and you indent the successor to make it a subtask and the predecessor of a summary task, you may receive the following error message:

This outline change would create a circular relationship.

CAUSE

This problem occurs when the predecessor task has a cross-project link as a predecessor and the task you are trying to subordinate is its successor. For example, let's say you have two tasks (A and B). They are linked by a Finish to Start relationship and Task A has a cross-project link to a task in another project. If you indent task B under Task A, you will receive this error message.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, remove the predecessor and successor link between the tasks and then indent the task.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Microsoft Project listed above.

Additional query words: prj2000

Keywords: kbbug kbpending kbusage KB176293