Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Defining Work Times with Calendars

Resources aren’t at your beck and call 24/7. Team members take vacations, attend training and conferences, and get sick. They may also work part time or work 4 long days and take Fridays off. Incorporating nonworking time and specialized work arrangements makes a Project schedule more likely to forecast how the project will actually play out. In Project, calendars carve out working and nonworking times.

Calendars are multitalented: You can apply a calendar to an entire project, individual resources (Applying Calendars), or specific tasks (Applying Calendars). For instance, you can set up a calendar to reflect your organization’s standard working times, corporate holidays, and factory closures, and use that calendar for all your projects. On the other hand, a resource calendar can represent a shift-work schedule or a team member’s particular work schedule and time off.

Project comes with a few built-in calendars (Choosing a Project Calendar) and automatically applies the built-in Standard calendar to new projects you create. However, you can modify existing calendars or build completely new ones and then apply them to custom-fit your projects’ and resources’ work hours.

This section explains creating and customizing calendars in Project. You’ll also find a quick review of how to apply calendars to projects, resources, and tasks. See Defining When Work Resources Are Available to learn how to integrate calendars, resource units, and resource availability ...