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About this lesson

Learn the differences between the Microsoft Project calendars and when to use them. As a general rule, you should use the standard calendar.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2019/365.

Quick reference

Configure a Project Calendar

When you install Microsoft Project, you get three project calendars. These calendars are the 24 hours, night shift, and standard calendars. As a general rule, you should use the standard calendar. This calendar offers a weekly calendar where you schedule tasks and resources Monday through Friday with Saturdays and Sundays set as non-working time.

Further Discussion

If most tasks and resources in your project will work day and night, use the 24 hours calendar. If most tasks and resources work at night, use the night shift calendar.

It is possible to assign calendars to specific resources, but that is an advanced topic that is not covered in this fundamentals course.

In most cases, there are holidays and major periods of time when you know people will be unavailable. For example, in the United States, most people do not work on Thanksgiving or Christmas. You can add these special days as exceptions to the calendar you are working with.

Steps

To create calendar exceptions, follow these steps:

  • Click the Project tab and then click the Change Working Time icon.
  • In the exceptions tab, select a row and enter the name for an exception, like Thanksgiving. Finally, enter the Start and Finish date(s) for this exception.
    • You can also click the Details… button to crate recurring calendar items. For example, you may want to configure the calendar so Microsoft Project always treats the fourth Thursday of November as an exception.
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  • 00:04 Before we start adding tasks to our project we really
  • 00:07 should consider what our calendar should look like.
  • 00:11 Now the calendar allows us to define things like non-working days, holidays,
  • 00:16 vacations, things of that nature.
  • 00:19 There's a number of different types of calendars, you can have a calendar for for
  • 00:22 the project, for people, or resources, and you can also have calendars on a task.
  • 00:31 What we're going to do right now is focus on the project calendar for our project.
  • 00:37 So click the project tab at the top of the screen and click change working time.
  • 00:43 When you install Microsoft Project, you get three calendars.
  • 00:47 A 24 hour calendar,
  • 00:48 which basically says people can work any time during the day and night.
  • 00:53 You have a night shift, which has people working in the evening.
  • 00:57 And then you have the standard calendar.
  • 01:00 The standard calendar is the one that most people use.
  • 01:04 You can see over here on the right side of the screen,
  • 01:06 it says the working time is 8 AM to 12 noon, and then 1PM to 5 PM.
  • 01:13 Now it's okay if people start at 6 AM and work until 3,
  • 01:18 or 7:30 until 4:30.
  • 01:21 That's okay.
  • 01:22 It's usually best to just keep these settings as they are because at the end of
  • 01:27 the day as I'll show you,
  • 01:29 we're going to schedule duration of our project based on days, not hours.
  • 01:36 Now up at the top right hand corner of the screen,
  • 01:38 you see there’s a button called “Create New Calendar”.
  • 01:41 If you want to create a new calendar, you can.
  • 01:44 But I recommend you just stick with the standard project calendar.
  • 01:48 By default, Microsoft Project's standard calendar has Saturday and
  • 01:52 Sunday listed as nonworking time.
  • 01:56 What that means is, Project will only schedule people Monday through Friday.
  • 02:01 You can always override this setting, but for purposes of this training,
  • 02:06 we're going to stick with a Monday through Friday workweek.
  • 02:10 The way you create calendar items in Microsoft Project is to enter exceptions.
  • 02:16 An exception basically says here's a normal work week, but for
  • 02:20 certain days, or just maybe even a day, someone is not working.
  • 02:26 So, my project starts in October and there is a US holiday called Thanksgiving.
  • 02:31 I want to make sure that no one's scheduled to work during that day.
  • 02:37 So if I bring this arrow down and
  • 02:40 come to November, I can find the fourth Thursday of November.
  • 02:45 That's always when Thanksgiving is in the United States.
  • 02:49 With that selected, I can come down here to the name area and
  • 02:53 type Thanksgiving, and press Enter.
  • 02:59 Now that I've typed Thanksgiving with that day selected,
  • 03:02 you can see on cursor out and now it's saying this is non-working time.
  • 03:08 This is an exception day.
  • 03:11 So now the next thing I might do is say I also don't want someone to work the day
  • 03:16 after Thanksgiving.
  • 03:22 And as you can see, now I have two exceptions.
  • 03:26 Now, there's a better way of doing this.
  • 03:29 My project should not go more than a year.
  • 03:32 But, just to be on the safe side, I'm going to delete these two line items and
  • 03:36 do this a little bit differently this time.
  • 03:38 I'm going to say Thanksgiving, and
  • 03:44 then I'm going to click on the date area here and click on the details button.
  • 03:50 Now I can say every year on the fourth
  • 03:55 Thursday of November make that an exception.
  • 04:00 And by the way do it two times, so this will be over two years.
  • 04:06 As you can see the calendar still looks the same, but if I were to go to November,
  • 04:10 2016, you would also see this entry there.
  • 04:14 Let's do that one more time after Thanksgiving.
  • 04:25 And make it the fourth Friday for two occurrences.
  • 04:31 Now, I do not have to have the calendar displaying the month in order to do this.
  • 04:35 So, for example, in America we also have Christmas,
  • 04:42 and Christmas falls on December 25th.
  • 04:49 And here I can make this recurring yearly on the 25th, rather than a fourth Friday.
  • 04:55 I can just say, on the 25th, no matter when it is.
  • 04:58 For two occurrences.
  • 05:02 Finally, I'm going to come here to the December time period,
  • 05:07 and I'm going to just block off that whole entire week.
  • 05:12 And make this non working time.
  • 05:14 Because basically no one's going to be working the week after Christmas.
  • 05:18 So I'm going to type week after Christmas.
  • 05:25 And I'm going to set that from the 28th
  • 05:30 right up to January 1st then press enter.
  • 05:37 Now, sometimes when you press enter,
  • 05:39 it closes the window, but all you're doing is pressing the okay button.
  • 05:43 So, go back to the project tab and click change working time.
  • 05:47 And you can see here, I have my week after Christmas entry and
  • 05:51 notice also as I select them, it's bringing me to the dates.
  • 05:56 So now our calendar is configured, so we can start adding tasks to the project.

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