Using the Fill Down feature in Primavera P6 Professional is very useful and can save a lot of work. Here are a couple of time-saving tips for modifying data values in Primavera P6 Professional using the Fill Down feature.
Contiguous Fill Down
Let’s start with the basics. You can fill down any block of selected data using a right-click. The resulting menu offers a Fill Down option. Simply select that option and the value in the upper most selected row will be copied down all of the selected values.
Just be sure to keep an eye on the location of the yellow focus box; the Fill Down will occur in the column that has focus. So to be sure, right-click in the last cell of the column you are modifying.
Non-contiguous Fill Down
You can fill down a non-contiguous set of fields using the Ctrl key on your keyboard, much like you can in other standard Windows applications.
Simply select the items you want to fill down and then right-click on the last selected row, as previously described.
Here you can see how the Start Milestone Activity Type value has filled down to all the selected rows, ignoring the unselected rows in-between.
Fill Down and Grouping Bands
You can Fill Down across grouping bands and even control what gets updated by collapsing a particular grouping of activities. In this next WBS example, we’re filling down on the Activity Type field to make the Phase I and Phase III activities Task Dependent and leaving Phase II activities as Resource Dependent.
First the Phase II element is collapsed and then a Fill Down is performed on the Activity Type column.
The collapsed Phase II activities do not get changed when the Fill Down occurs and have retained their original Resource Dependent values. In short, the Fill Down feature skips over collapsed grouping bands.
You can watch a video of this in action here Video – Primavera P6 Professional Fill Down In Action.
Summary
If you weren’t already using the Fill Down feature in Primavera P6 Professional, hopefully this article has shown what a great time-saving feature it is.
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