Define Early and Must Finish Date
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There is a "must finish" date in the project overview, but I think you’re talking about activity level constraints, right? In which case I assume you mean Mandatory start / finish constraints
My mentor (the bloke who taught me P3) described the use of Mandatory dates as akin to swearing in church, by which I assume he meant blasphemy. They circumvent the logic in your plan. I don’t use them.
Ive just reread your post and realise that I probably misinterpreted what youre after. the above still stands but I think you mean the Early Finish and Must finish dates in the project overview?
If so, then what the 2 previous posters say is accurate. The Early Finish date is the last Early Finish date that appears on any of the activities in your project. This is calcualted by the schedule and so you cant set it. You can set a Project Must Finish by date. Setting a "Project Must Finish by" date effectively puts a "Late Finish" constraint on whatever activity has the latest Early Finish on your project. If you have an activity with an Early finish date that is later than your stated "Project Must finish by" date then a path of negative float will be generated, showing that teh analysis says you cannot finish your project on time. Personally, I have only found this useful for very simple plans. Much better is to build a high level plan, above your detailed plan, which contains your completion milestones fro each phase, work area, etc. Then you can set late finish constraints on these milestones. That way each of them will generate a negative float path if their finish dates are under threat, you will also get more detailed float information for embedded activities, where you will see teh float on that activity before it affects the relevant milestone (or the nearest one, if it attached to many of them).
Kevin
The "Must finish date" can be the contract completion date when establishing a baseline, but for analysis purpose it is better to remove this constraint.
Early Finish date is generated by Time-Analysing the Schedule and signifies the earliest date you can finish a schedule. Must Finish defines Mandatory date or a constraint that the Project must end by. Must finish date can be the Contract Completion Date, if you own the Program Float.