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Party like it’s 2050

Recently we noticed several people asking about the “2050 problem” with Primavera P6 on Linkedin. Here is the issue. When Primavera P6 users try to input dates starting in 2050 the calendar reverts to 1950. Holy Marty McFly! (As an aside, my brother Steve owned a DeLorean for more than 20 years and his mechanic did all of the work on the “Back to the Future” cars). For those of you with access to My Oracle Support, a solution was posted in Doc ID 905558.1 without much explanation as to the root cause. This problem does not occur in the P6 Web component of P6 EPPM.

While 2050 may seem like a rather esoteric concern the reality is that some of our clients are planning projects right now that are expected to last decades. For example, we trained project managers from the Southwest Research Institute Planetary Science Directorate. SwRI is an independent, nonprofit, applied engineering and physical science research and development organization with over 3000 employees. One of their projects is NASA’s New Horizons Mission to Pluto.

The New Horizons spacecraft left Earth on January 19, 2006 and did not reach Pluto until July 14, 2015. That’s nearly nine years just traveling in space. But before that there were the many years spent planning this mission. We have also trained several NASA contractors at Cape Kennedy and it really makes you appreciate what long-range planning is all about, in terms of both time and distance!

Personally, I expect to be either dead or cryogenically frozen by 2050, but for the younger Primavera P6 users out there who expect to be around then there is a solution right now. First, we need a DeLorean…

Just kidding. The solution is actually quite simple. The “2050 problem” only occurs in Primavera P6 when the date format is set to two digits for the year. Inputting 01/01/50 in a date field is interpreted as January 1, 1950. Who knows why this suddenly starts happening in 2050. Dates in 2049 are fine! But if the date format is set to four digits before the dates, P6 is ready to party on past 2049.

The date format is a user preference. Go to Edit > User Preferences > Dates to change the date format. Keep in mind that changing a user preference changes the appearance of all projects accessed by that user. Going back to two digits for the year later on could cause issues with the projects that extend past 2049. I am certain that Oracle will fix this issue eventually. And perhaps we will see a real hoverboard by then!