Duplicate activity bars

Question:

I have a task in a milestone schedule that somehow has two activity bars on it. I can modify the gray bar which is the one I want, but I am unable to modify/delete the red activity bar underneath. I tried to create another task with only the one activity bar but it created dual activity bars again. Any idea why this is happening and what I can do to fix it?

Answer:

This can happen if a schedule is outlined and summary bars are turned on. The red bar is likely a summary bar.

Solving the problem is easily done by either 1) Indenting the task so that it does not have any lower level tasks and correcting the outline structure of the schedule. or 2) Turning off summary bars.

Determine if the task has lower level tasks:

Select the down arrow next to Choose Rows, Columns | New Column.
Choose Outline Level.
Check the outline levels to make sure that the task in question does not have any lower level tasks which would cause a summary bar to be shown.

Turn off Summary Bars:

Choose Other | Summary Bar Settings on the Layout tab.