How to add holidays and change working time in MS Project

by Santoshi Para

How to add Holidays in MS Project

Any project will need to have public and project holidays which are applicable to the entire project. To add public holidays please click on Project Tab and then click on Change Working Time. After the change working time dialog is opened. Please make sure the drop down For Calendar is selected as Standard Project (Calendar).

If the Standard Project calendar is not selected then the changes will be applied to the specific person who's name has been selected in the For Calendar. Any Exceptions that you add here will be applied to the entire project. This is place where you should add public holidays based on the country you reside in.

 

Add Project Holidays

 

Add Holidays in MS Project

 

How to change working days in MS Project 

If you want to apply a different set of settings for people working lesser time or on a part time basis then you can do by changing the working time. To change the working time you can open resource information by double clicking on the resource name in the resource sheet. You should see the Change Working Time button as highlighted in the Image 1 above. If you add a new entry and click on the details you should be able to add details for each day. Individual leaves can be added by entering a Name and then start and stop dates.

 

Image 1 : Change Working Time for Resources

 

If you click on the Details button then you can add recurrence patterns or add flexible hours only for that day. After you click on the Change Working Time you should see the dialog which will allow you add Exceptions and Work Weeks. Please see image 2 above. Exceptions can be used when you want to add holidays or leaves for individuals. Work weeks allows you to define a different working pattern other than the default working time.

Image 2: Change Working Time Main Dialog

 

The main dialog shows the current exceptions and the calendar for the resource in question. This can be used to setup part time schedules for individuals. Please see image 3. You can select the exception to occur on a day, weekly etc. It is very similar to the outlook recurrence options. The work week option allows you to set the non-working or reduced hours per day for a week. Once the time or day is set to be different from the default setting the changes will affect all the weeks for that resource. This feature is very useful if someone in the team works only a few days a week or works different hours to the default setting.

 

Image 3: Adding Work Week Details

 

Detailed View of Leave

 

Adding Annual Leave

 

How to change working days at Project Level in MS Project

You can setup the working hours per day and week by going to Options (Start up Menu) --> Schedule. You can also setup first day of the week, start time, end time and days per week. The settings selected here will apply for the entire project and all the resources.

 

Change daily working time for project