Whenever I change the amount of time in the Work column because a task is either going to take more or less time that originally anticipated, Project defaults to changing the Duration column. 99% of the time I want the duration to stay the same and the amount of time that the resource is working on the task to change instead, so I have to go in and select the "Increase the hours resources work per day, so the task duration stays the same." or "Decrease the hours resources work per day, so the task duration stays the same." option, depending on whether I raised or lowered the amount of work time. Is there a way to make that option the default, so I don't have to take that extra step every time?

Set you task types as fixed duration and then as you change work, duration will remain stable and the peak units will change.

You may add the "Type" field to the task view to change many tasks easily OR select all tasks (except summary), click the Information button on the Task tab, and set the task type on the Advanced tab.

I hope this helps.

Julie

Thank you for the information, I tried this and it solved the part about the duration changing, but now the Resource percentage won't change, but I need it to change. So, for example, if I have a task for "Mike" set for 1 hour, the Resource Name column says Mike[13%]. If I change the task to 2 hours, I want that column to say Mike[25%], but it stays at 13%. Is there any way to fix this part too?

There is a long series of discussion surrounding Assignment Units vs Peak units regarding Project 2010. See:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/project/arch...ject-2010.aspx

for a beginning. The issue is you are seeing assignment units when it is Peak Units that show the correct value. Peak Units are only meaningful in the Task Usage or Resource Usage view.

So, the short answer is no. However you can add the Peak Units and Assignment Units field to the Task Usage view and copy the Peak units over the assignment units field to see what you need.

My recommendation is to NOT show assignment units with the bars in the Gantt chart. It just gets too deep into the mire to try to explain to others who may look at your Gantt chart and not fully understand how work, duration and units are related.