Microsoft Project has limits?

BY:  Tanya Foster

Ever wondered how many tasks you can put into a single project? Or how many resources you can assign to a specific task?  Believe it or not, Project does have its limits!  Here are some limits that I found helpful to know and hopefully you will too.

Now… keep in mind that some of these numbers are really outrageous and I would never recommend that you use up to the maximum number allowed on some of these!

Tasks in a single project               400,000
Resources per project                  700,000
Task dependencies per project    No limit
Predecessors per task                  50,000
Successors per task                      50,000
Outline levels per project             65.535
Consolidated projects                   998
Baselines                                      11
Characters in a text field              255
Earliest date allowed                    1/01/1984
Latest date allowed                      12/31/2049

I told you… some of these numbers are outrageous!  400,000 tasks in a single project?  Can you imagine trying to manage that monster!  Or trying to manage 700,000 resources in a project?  I think I’d want to quit my job if I had to manage all of that in a single project!  What about looking at the Gantt chart in a project that had 50,000 predecessors for a single task… No thanks!  I know that you’ll probably never hit the limit on any of these, but it is nice to know this information.  I’ve had people ask me before how many tasks could be in a single project or how many consolidated projects can you have and I didn’t know the answer at the time.  So hopefully this information will be helpful to you in the fact that you can put a lot of tasks or resources in your project without worrying that you’re going to hit a maximum limit.  Now there are two on this list that I have hit the maximum on before and chances are you have too.  That’s the baselines and characters in a text field.  It wasn’t the end of the world when I did hit that max on those two, but I improvised and I’m sure that you will too if the situation arises.  There are some more limits if you would like to read up on them… the ones listed in this blog are just the ones that I have had people ask me about.  You can read more about specific limitations here http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HP101065651033.aspx.

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