8/27/22, 9:02 AM How To Remove Actuals From A Primavera P6 Schedule

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Blog > Primavera P6 Tutorials > How To Remove Actuals From A Primavera P6 Schedule

How To Remove Actuals From A Primavera

P6 Schedule
FEBRUARY 9, 2016 BY JEROME IJACHI ODEH — 34 COMMENTS

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Though not a widely recommended

practice, there are times when one might
want to de-progress or remove actuals
from a Primavera P6 schedule. Some
reasons for wanting to return a schedule
after weeks or months of progress
updates to its state at Project Start are:

1. Baseline not being set before

applying actuals
2. Wrong or no resource assignments applied when baseline was set
3. Wrong logic relationships in schedule when baseline was set?

A downside to removing actuals from a schedule is that the “new” schedule will
need to be progressed again to the last reporting date. This means all periodic
updates carried out on the last schedule have to be repeated with same data as
before.

Here’s How to Remove Actuals from a P6

Schedule
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8/27/22, 9:02 AM How To Remove Actuals From A Primavera P6 Schedule

This quick tip will show how to remove actuals from a Primavera P6 schedule,
returning the project to its planned values at project start in 7 steps. It shouldn’t
matter what version of P6 you have. We assume prior knowledge of how to use
P6’s Global Change facility. Assuming we have the schedule in figure below from
which we want to remove all traces of actuals with the following additional
columns visible in the layout aside the usual suspects: Performance % Complete,
Original Duration, Actual Duration, Remaining Duration, Actual Labor Units,
Actual Nonlabor Units & Actual Total Cost.

All the columns listed above will be used to confirm at the end of the tutorial if we
have returned our schedule to its original state at project start.

STEP 1 – Project Calculation Tab Setting

In the Projects view, select the open project and click on the Calculations tab.

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In the calculation tab, ensure that the Link Budget and At Completion for not
started activities checkbox is ticked and then select the Reset Remaining
Duration and Units to Original option button.

This step is required so that when we change the status of all our activities to Not
Started, the Remaining Duration for our activities will be changed to same values
as Original Duration.

In the next 2 steps, we need to change all Actual Labor Units & Actual Nonlabor
Units to 0. One way of doing this is to use the Fill Down facility, but imagine if you
have a schedule of thousands of activities, then the use of Fill Down will be
tedious. My preferred method is the use of Global Change as this enables one to
save and reuse the Global Change in other schedules if required.

STEP 2 – Global Change Actual Labor Units & Cost

Run the Global Change shown in the figure below to change all Actual Labor Units
& Actual Labor Cost to 0.

STEP 3 – Global Change Actual Nonlabor Units & Cost

Run the Global Change shown in the figure below to change all Actual Nonlabor
Units & Actual Nonlabor Cost to 0.
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STEP 4 – Global Change Actual Material Units

Run the Global Change shown in the figure below to change all Actual Material
Units to 0.

STEP 5 – Global Change Expense Cost % Complete

Run the Global Change shown in the figure below to change all Actual Expense
Cost to 0 by changing Expense Cost % Complete to 0.
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STEP 6 – Global Change Activity Status

Run the Global Change shown in the figure below to change Activity Status for all
activities to Not Started.

STEP 7 – Schedule as at Planned Start

Run Time Analysis (F9) as at project start by setting the Data Date to Project
Planned Start. You can get the Project Planned Start from the Dates tab of the

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Projects view.

RESULT
Our schedule should now have the following for all activities as shown in figure
below:

1. Performance % Complete = 0
2. Original Duration = Remaining Duration
3. Actual Labor Units = 0
4. Actual Non-labor Units =0
5. Actual Total Cost= 0

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The schedule has no actuals and is now ready to readdress the reason for
removing all actuals. Use these steps and save the Global Change scripts so you
can have the ability to remove actuals at your fingertips.

Your Turn
Have you ever had to remove actuals from a schedule? Why? What approach did
you take?

Filed Under: Primavera P6 Tutorials, Progressing

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About Jerome Ijachi Odeh

Jerome Ijachi Odeh is a PMI Certified Scheduling Professional who has
been working in the Subsea sector of the Oil & Gas industry since 2003.
Jerome also writes on his personal blog which you can find here.

Comments

AB says:
February 10, 2016 at 6:56 am
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Dear Jerome,

This info is helpful, thanks,

Now, I removed all the progress did my changes and assigned baseline again.

Now i have thousand of activities to progress, can you guide how to progress
those activities faster? If i progress those manually it may take weeks.

Regards,

AB

Reply

Jerome says:
February 11, 2016 at 9:37 am
Hi AB,

Unfortunately, I don’t know of a fast way of assigning progress. As

mentioned in the blog post, this is the downside of removing actuals from
a schedule.

Maybe you should explore the use of SDK and see if it will help speed
things up.

=jerome

Reply

Rizwan says:
May 01, 2018 at 11:07 am
Export the Progress in excel before removing the actual and then
you can import it back after you removed Actual and done with your
changes

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Reply

Jay Bergstrom says:

February 10, 2016 at 7:15 am
Jerome, I noticed that you didn’t include Equipment in your Global
Change report. Were you assuming that equipment was in the Expense field?
Also I have had bad experiences with the budgets not being restored properly by
P6 as well as the units/time. This may be different in the latest version of P6 but
I’ve always stayed away from reusing ant activity that has been actualized. You
also don’t mention unchecking the actuals boxes. How is that accomplished?
Thanks for the input. Jay Bergstrom

Reply

Jerome says:
February 11, 2016 at 9:37 am
Hi Jay,

My understanding is that “Equipment” is of Material Resource Type and

Step 4 takes care of this Resource Type.

On Budgeted Units. You’ll notice that my Global Change only affects

Actual Units, so your Budgeted Units should the same as you had it
before assigning actuals based on your Duration Type definition.

Step 6 unchecks the actual boxes for you, so you do not need to do it
manually.

=jerome

Reply

Reply

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Jerome says:
February 10, 2016 at 7:21 am
Hi AB,

Unfortunately, I don’t know of a fast way of assigning progress. As mentioned in

the blog post, this is the downside of removing actuals from a schedule.

Maybe you should explore the use of SDK and see if it will help speed things up.

=jerome

Reply

Jerome says:
February 10, 2016 at 7:34 am
Hi Jay,

My understanding is that “Equipment” is of Material Resource Type and Step 4

takes care of this Resource Type.

On Budgeted Units. You’ll notice that my Global Change only affects Actual Units,
so your Budgeted Units should the same as you had it before assigning actuals
based on your Duration Type definition.

Step 6 unchecks the actual boxes for you, so you do not need to do it manually.

=jerome

Reply

Padmanabhan says:
April 03, 2016 at 5:54 am

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how to change actual finish start and actual finish dates, back to orgininal

Reply

Jerome Odeh says:

April 03, 2016 at 4:45 pm
Following the steps outlined in the tutorial should return
Actual Start & Actual Finish Dates to the Start & Finish Dates
before progress update provided the logic relationships are still
the same as they were at Project Start.

Reply

Clement Ani says:

February 11, 2016 at 2:54 am
Thanks as I have tried doing this before in a different way and it messed
my programme up.

Reply

Jose recendiz says:

February 11, 2016 at 6:49 am
AB you can progress all activities by the following,
Reflect actual dates using the logic ( relationships), or with constrains
Remember that every time you change logic you need to do F9 to recalculate but
without changing data date
Then once you are sure all dates are correct you can run the progress update to
the desire new data date and P6 will progress all activities like if everything
happened without deviations ( of course any deviation were already reflected on
step one before the progress update)
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Reply

Sonali Nair says:

February 11, 2016 at 11:49 pm
Hi Jerome,

Your information is very helpful.

I am stuck up in a situation.I have to find the longest path taken by a project
schedule which is already completed. All the dates are actual. Can it be solved in
some way by using global change by “removing actual dates”?

Thnx
Sonali Nair

Reply

Jerome says:
February 12, 2016 at 3:28 am
Hi Sonali,

Suggest you take a copy of your schedule and try the steps below (I’ll also
try these steps myself tonight & see if it works, I’ll do a blog post for it).

– Ensure that the schedule is fully logic linked. I know some people don’t
worry about logic links for completed activities, but to achieve what you
are after, you need to ensure proper logic are in place and that includes
resolving any out of sequence activities

– Run a Global Change to make Original Duration = Actual Duration

– Run a 2nd Global Change to change Activity Status to “Not Started”

– Run a Time Analysis (F9) with data date set at Project Actual Start
(remember to set your definition of critical activities to Longest Path in
Scheduling Options)
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– Run a filter for critical activities and fingers crossed, voila you should
have your longest path

=jerome

Hopefully,

Reply

BAHIJ ASHOOR says:

March 20, 2016 at 4:09 am
HI Mr. JEROME

EVERY THING IS OK BUT WHAT ABOUT THE LOGIC BEING CHANGED BECAUSE OF
THE OUT-OF-SEQUENCE ACTIVITIES LEADS TO CHANGE THE RELATIONSHIPS
WHEN THE PROGRESS RUNS OUT OF SCHEDULE

Reply

Padmanabhan says:
April 03, 2016 at 3:26 am
how to correct out of sequence activities in a fatser way. Appreciate a
feed back

Reply

Evan Phillips says:

May 05, 2016 at 7:41 am
I’ve noticed that if you’ve stored period performance and then try to
remove actuals they delta will show for that period. My work-around is to display
all used period columns and zero fill-down the last period, store, then repeat for
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each previous period until I get to the start date. It’s tedious but I’d love to hear if
anyone has a better idea.

Reply

Adam Salam says:

July 13, 2016 at 9:08 am
Very high Values in Actual Cost!!!

In Primavera P6 after partial planning and trying to enter Actual units for
cost/time control i found that the resultant Actual Cost very high!!! where could
be the problem?…

Reply

Amar Iadaden says:

August 17, 2016 at 1:16 pm
i would like to remove actual duration to change the activity status from
completed to not started, but i havn’t in the second parameter (after
“then”).Please advise.

Reply

Mohammed Iqbal Ali Khan says:

September 30, 2016 at 4:34 pm
Dear Sir,

I need to know, How to evaluate the progress % complete by using phyiscal

perentage complete foe each wbs.

Awaitng your respond.

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BR.

Reply

Qasim says:
October 01, 2016 at 3:11 am
Thank you. It was useful.

Reply

Asif Iqbal says:

December 28, 2016 at 4:48 am
I did the same as explained & it worked for Procurement & Engineering
activities. But the thing is that, it is not working for the Construction activities.
The same message “Cannot set status to Not Started if activity has actuals”. is
displayed.

Can some help please…..

Reply

Jerome Ijachi Odeh says:

December 28, 2016 at 5:05 am
Asif,

You still have some actual resource units or cost for construction activities.
Ensure that you have followed the steps outlined for removing resource or
expense actuals.

Kind regards,
=jerome

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Reply

Ramana says:
June 07, 2017 at 8:33 am
Thanks alot. It worked & Saved lot of my time.

Reply

Andy says:
August 11, 2017 at 10:18 am
Very Informative and easy to understand and implement

Reply

Syed Muzaffar says:

August 25, 2017 at 12:13 pm
I followed the method you mentioned point by point, however, I was left
with some Activities still ‘Actualised’, they all had Activity Type = ‘Task Dependent’.
When I tried to create a new Global Change for Activity Type = ‘Task Dependant’ I
couldn’t find ‘Activity Type’ in the list of parameters. Please can you help in this
regard. Thanks,

Reply

Jerome Odeh says:

August 25, 2017 at 2:18 pm
Syed,

Make sure you have picked “Activities” from the “Select Subject Area”
dropdown box as activity type is associated with Activities and not Activity
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Resource Assignment.

=jerome

Reply

Zeeshan Ali says:

June 19, 2018 at 10:21 am
Thanks for the explanation. I am unable to upload a screenshot here. Just
to let you know that, you could easily add in parameters for all type of resources,
excluding expenses, under just one global change, saving you time and hassle.

Reply

Eral says:
September 14, 2019 at 10:39 pm
Sir,

I followed the steps but when i commit changes on step number 6, Error were
prompted :

” Error(s) occurred while processing the global change. Please review the report
before committing the changes”

And when i click OK and click on commit changes, some activities that are
completed not replaced by not started. However some items changes to not
started. Can anyone help me on how to resolve this issue. I am using p6 r8.3.

Thank you and good day

Reply

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Jerome Odeh says:

November 17, 2019 at 9:08 am
Hi Eral,

I can’t replicate your error. Get in touch via LinkedIn and I’ll see how I can
help you.

Jerome

Reply

Ola says:
November 14, 2019 at 9:47 pm
Sir,

I followed above step on how to remove actual. I have a problem when I am in

Step #3, there is error that pop-up everytime i click changes.

“Error(s) occurred while processing the global change. Please review the report
before committing the changes”

And when i click commit changes and view result some activities are changes to
not started, but most of the activities still same (still completed).

Please Sir help me with regards to this issue and kindly let me know the reasons
why this error pop-up.

Thank you and good day.

Reply

Jerome Odeh says:

November 17, 2019 at 9:09 am

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Hi Ola,

I can’t replicate your error. Get in touch via LinkedIn and I’ll see how I can
help you.

Jerome

Reply

Ahubi says:
December 17, 2019 at 6:07 pm
Hi Jerome

That was really helpful for me. Thanks for sharing

Reply

Leonardo Gomes says:

February 13, 2020 at 5:43 am
Hello,

how unlink to columns Budgeted Nonlabor Units and Budgeted Nonlabor Cost?

Reply

Doug Galt says:

March 21, 2021 at 12:54 am
Is there a way to remove the actuals from a master schedule but keep
the budget total costs and / or budget total hours?

Regards,
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8/27/22, 9:02 AM How To Remove Actuals From A Primavera P6 Schedule

Doug
dgalt09@gmail.com

Reply

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