MS Project 2013: Overall duration, taking account of non-business days

Question

In Microsoft Project 2013, is there a way of showing "total duration taking account of non-business days", rather than simply "total number of business days"?

For example (using a standard calendar): If I were to enter a sequence of 260 tasks, each of which takes 1 day, and each of which follows on consecutively from the previous (Task A then Task B then Task C etc), then the total duration calculated by MS Project is 260 days.

At first glance this calculated duration appears to imply an overall duration of about 0.7 years (i.e. 260/365) because it only takes account of business days.

If resources will only be working during business hours, I would like to show that the duration is approximately 1 year.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

As far as I know, there is no such in-built functionality. However you can use a custom field for that. Here is an example - http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2009/11/05/tech_tip_how_to_show_calendar_day_duration_in_ms_project.html

Answer 2

You may want to check which calendar you have assigned as the project calendar. The default "Standard" calendar does not count non-working days (Saturday and Sunday) in the duration calculation. Check Project Information on the Project ribbon.

Answer 3

How do you need to see the output? You can create a custom calculated number field / column that displays the number of elapsed days (i.e. "15"), or you can create a custom calculated text field that displays the number of elapsed days with formatting (i.e. "15 d"). The required formatting will determine the type of custom calculated field you should use, as well as the formula that you attach to that field.

Answer 4

Simple solution is customize calendar according to your need like number of working days, working time, holidays, team vacations, client holidays etc. This will give you the details you need.

Answer 5

As others have mentioned, there are project calendar settings that determine which days are counted as working days. Perhaps your working calendar has been set to consider weekends as working days.

You should check the working time for your project in the Project -> Change Working Time menu.

Detailed help can be found on microsoft.com :

Change working days for the project calendar

Answer 6

Usually Clients want to see your schedule with units in calendar days rather than working days. The quickest way to do this is to assign 8 working hours to Saturdays and Sundays in your custom calendar.

You can do this if you are not using your calendar for resource scheduling. I would recommend creating a different project file for resource scheduling.

Answer 7

Use edays instead of just days (e) = elapsed days and counts all days (incl. Weekends etc)