actual duration

[Norma]

I am new to Microsoft project, when you enter a start and end
date for a task, is there a way to make it actual. Example, if I put
8/15/07 as start and 8/17/07 as end, it calculates it as 2 days and I
actually want to see 3 days since work is being done on the 15th, 16th &
17th. Thank you I have seached the help but cannot find it. It always
subtracts the begin date from the end date which reflects 1 day less. example
May 5 less May 1st = 4 days. I want my duration to show 5 days. Thank you
very much

 

[Steve House]

Project always tracks durations to the nearest 10th of a minute. Whenever
you enter (or it displays) durations it converts from the actual value in
minutes into the unit that you have chosen as your convenient display unit
and by default it considers a "day" to be 8 hours or 480.0 minutes to be
exact. So lets say we have a task starting 8/15 at 1pm and ending 8/17 at
12 noon. By your reckoning that would be 3 days but is it really? If we
work 8 to 5, the standard calendar, the 15th we work 4 hours then go home.
The 16th we work 4 hours and break for lunch for an hour, then work another
4 hours and go home. Finally the 17th we work 4 hours and the task is done.
That's a total of two working days, 16 hours, that we've worked, not three!

Note that Jim is right on the money telling you not to enter start and end
dates. You don't tell Project the schedule for the project. It's job is to
tell YOU the schedule you ought to plan for, given the amount of work that
needs to be done, the relationships between the various tasks, and the
resources you have with which to do it. The dates and times for tasks to
take place are the program's OUTPUTS, not its user inputs. The only reason
you're even allowed to type anything at all into the Start and Finish
columns is to give you a convenient way of entering constraints for the few
tasks where they might be required.