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Why are some tasks showing as milestones?

OnePager gives you the option to automatically convert shorter tasks to milestones. This is designed to improve readability and ease of editing. There is a threshold in OnePager that you can set to decide when tasks are converted into milestones, if at all.

To adjust this setting, go to Home > Chart Properties > Advanced and look for the Task/Milestone Threshold:

Here are some common settings:

  • Two (2.0) Days: This is the default setting for most standard OnePager templates. Anything scheduled for 48 calendar hours or less will be converted into a milestone.
  • One (1.0) Day: Setting your threshold to 1.0 days means that anything less than 24 calendar hours in duration will be converted into a milestone. It's important to remember that most tasks in Microsoft Project are based on working days. So, something you schedule for one working day is really only nine hours (0.375 calendar days). As a result, if you set your threshold to 1.0, you will still see many 1-day tasks showing as milestones.
  • RECOMMENDED Partial (0.3) Day: Because the average working day is nine hours (0.375 days) long, setting your threshold to slightly less than that (0.3) will ensure that milestones stay as milestones, but short-duration tasks will continue to show as tasks based on their actual durations.
  • Zero (0.0) Days: Setting your threshold to 0.0 days means that everything will show as a task. This works well if 100% of the items in your project plan are tasks. However, if you have any legitimate milestones in your project plan, these milestones will be converted to zero-duration tasks, and will appear in OnePager as very skinny lines.

When finding the perfect task/milestone threshold, the most important thing to remember is that OnePager considers a day to be 24-hours long. Microsoft Project often considers a day to be only working hours. In this case, OnePager is more precise than Microsoft Project, so your threshold may need to be more precise as well.


Last Updated: August 12, 2020