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I have a plan in MS Project. I have a resource that can't work 5 days per week, so I have negotiated with him to work just 3 days per week. In the plan, I changed his calendar for Thursday and Friday to be non-working days.

When a 12-hour task starts on Wednesday and finishes Monday, MS Project shows the task with 28 hours duration. How can I get MS Project to calculate this as 12 hours?

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Is the task 12 hours in duration or work? If the task is 12 hour of work starting on Wednesday and the resource works 8 hours per day, the duration of the task is 1.5 days or 12 hours.
If you mean a summary task duration is showing as 28 hours, it is 28 hours from Wednesday at 8:00 am to Monday at 12:00 pm based upon a standard calendar where Monday through Friday is working time. The summary task does not use the resource's definition of working time - it uses the project calendar definition.

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    So I would have to change the project calendar instead of resource's calendar? Oct 30, 2013 at 16:49
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    Is the 3-day per week resource the only resource in the Project? Will work be performed by other resources on Thursday and Friday? If work will only ever be done Monday through Wednesday, then yes, change the project calendar.
    – JulieS
    Oct 30, 2013 at 17:26
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I think what might help you is usage of "eday" (i.e. elapsed day) which takes one day as 24 hours. See this MS community page.

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  • I don't think elapsed days is what the OP needs. The caution with using elapsed duration tasks is that the resources will be scheduled to work 24 hours per day.
    – JulieS
    Dec 31, 2014 at 15:50
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Use work-based estimating on the resource assignment. In other words, change the task type to Fixed Work and enter the effort estimate as 24h. Otherwise, keep it simple, leave the resource's working time in their calendar as 5d per week and only assign them with 60% units (i.e. 24/40h). The duration of the task will be 5d, but the effort will be 24h, and the associated cost will be correct. There is no need to micro-manage the hours per day for the person, because the task duration and work estimates are correct. Whether they work 24h in 3d and take 2d off, or they work 24h in 5d and take a couple of hours off each day is irrelevant. The amount of effort required is determined, and the duration will be 5d.

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