Finish date - Interpretation

[Bill]

Hi All,

Entering a start date of a Monday and a finish date of the following Friday
is giving a duration of 4 days. Is this changeable so that it gives me 5
days?

Regards.
Bill.

 

[Jim Aksel]

Generally you never want to key in a date for start of finish, everything
should work through predessors to establish dates. Keying in any date in the
Start/Finish fields causes Project to establish constraints on the task
related to these dates--- generally not what you want to do.

In your specific case, change the duration, not the finish date.
This is best accomplished in the Task Entry View. View/Task Entry. If it
is not visible: View/More Views/Task Entry. Alternative: Window/Split

In the lower window, you can change the duration. You may want to also
explore the help system for additional information on Task Type. For
example, you can enter "Fixed Work" which means the % of resource allocation
changes as you change duration (the work spreads over the keyed in duration).
Or, you can go Fixed Duration in which the work changes to fill the duration
with the % of a resource assigned.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

A day for Project is what you tell it it should be.
A day is not the period bewteen two midnights.
A day is defined in Tools, Options, Calendar.
Hope this helps,

 

[Bill]

Thanks Jim, your answer requires a little more detail from me.

The dates in question are imports from other MS Access based data. We are
only using Project to display an overview of the information, however we
have gone as far as estimating areas such as resource availability and usage
for estimating purposes. Thus we are using Project as an estimating/planning
tool rather than critical analysis of logistics and process etc.

So I have no control over the way in which the information is being
presented, and users are expecting that something that starts on Monday and
finishes on Friday will have taken 5 days.

Regards.
Bill.

 

[Bill]

Thanks. I will have a look in Calendar and see if I can find a way of
dealing with this.
Ta.
Bill.

 

[Steve House]

It also depends on the time Project has assumed for the start and end, the
number of hours considered to be working time hours between start and finish
according the the calendar governing the task, and the definition of a "day"
in the Calendar Options settings. Here's how it could work ... If
Tools/Options/Calendar says that "Hours per Day" = 8, the task starts Mon at
12:00 noon and finishes Fri 12:00 noon and the working time calendar says
work hours are 0800-1200 and 1300-1700 - Monday we'd get 4 hours of work,
Tue, Wed and Thur 8 hours each, and Fri 4 hours for a total of 32 hours of
work. 32hours/8hours per day = 4 days of duration. Date fields are really
date/time fields and durations are ALWAYS stored and computed in working
time minutes, regardless of what units are chosen to input or display them
in.

To see what's going on for sure, go to the Tools/Options/View dialog box and
set the date format to one that includes both date and time.