Change of Calendar in MS Project

Open column for Task Calendar. Select 6 days/week calendar for first activity and then select the activities below you want to fill.

The field you want to copy must be at the beginning of the selection. On the Edit menu, point to Fill, and then click the direction you want.

Regards.

Hi,
I am afraid it’s not posible to do that "with a few keystrokes".
I would suggest the following:
a. copy/paste the list of activities and the duration from ms project to excel,
b. write an excel formula = duration/5*6; I hope the new duration will still be an integer
c. in MS Project, open Project, Project Information, and apply the 6day per week calendar to the project; be sure no other calendar is applied to any particular task
d. in MS Project, open Tools, Options, Calendar and change the values "Hours per day" and "Hours per week" as per the number of hours in the calendar itself (Options, Change working time)
e. copy/paste from excel to ms project the new durations in the duration column.
that’s all, folks
Alexandre

All you have to do is go to Tools|Change Working Time - ensure that you have Standard (Project Calendar) in the drop down menu at the top, select the column of the day you want to make the working day and then select "Nondefault working time", press okay and that’s it
THAT’S ALL FOLKS

Sukumaran & Will,
you should read the entire question: it’s not only to apply a new calendar to the project and keep the task current durations, but first of all to keep the same start and finish dates!
All the best

Hi Bo,

I wonder what you are asking is really feasible or desirable?

You are asking to increase your calandar from a five day week to a six day week and maintain orginal dates. By the very nature of adding the extra day you will have a plan that has no start or finish dates on the sixth day!

a) Are you not best change your callandar as described by earlier replies.
b) Add colums for the start and finish dates, then populate with the original dates (copy & paste).
c) Multply all your durations by a factor of 1.2 (i.e.6/5).
d) Let the software produce your new dates and then manually adjust the durations to get something similiar.

Alternativly, chage your callanadr and ignore your original dates - just increase a few select durations to maintain your project completion dates, i.e "pack out" the plan to be in line with the earlier one.

Regards

John

Hi John / Alexandre

Thanks for the answers.

The reason while I’m asking is that I time after time have "inherited" 5-days programmes from other fellow engineers/planners & sub-contractors, when they know we are working 6 days/week.

For tender purposes many choose to do a time schedule just with the default template of MS-Project (i.e. 5 days), this being indifferent from nowhere in the world or no matter what company I worked in. When it then comes to actual contract award and you have to do a more detailed time schedule (this is where I normally come into the picture) you suddenly have to resource load the schedule and calculate manhours, hence the need for the actual work calendar (i.e. 6days/week).

However, when transforming the tender schedule into the contract schedule (e.g. clause 8.3.programme for FIDIC contracts) it is necessary to maintain original durations of misc. activities and then maybe use these overall activities/durations for splitting up into more detailed sub-programmes.

I can see I have to do the "manual" conversion with multiplication of 1.2 and so on. No easy way out....

Thanks,

Bo

Bo,
By using MS Excel or any other spreadsheet, you will get the "correct" durations for a large number of tasks very easily!
A more efficient way than enter the duration by hand in the MS Project table!
Alexandre

Hi Alexandre,

Sorry for not expressing myself clearly. By "manual" I meant that there wasn’t any feature available in MS Project for this and that I had to use something else, e.g. Excel, and then copy columns back and forth (No, I hadn’t thought about do it the old fashioned "manually", i.e by calculator).

Excel with a ROUNDUP-function was what I intended to use. I guess I co also do it in MS Project by making e.g. a formula for "Number 1" such as "Durations x 1.2" and some integer functions, copy the values (i.e. without formula) to "Number 2" and then copy "Number 2" back to "Durations" or something similar......, well, maybe as you said Excel is easier.

Thanks again,

Bo

Hemm... Bo,

Me not good in writting.

Planning style is your preference, as long as it works on-site, and the client is happy!
Whatever your reason, let me try to answer this cosmetic solution... without using excel.

Unconventional issue, w alternative unconventional suggestion.
>> multiplying duration w 1.2 = dates may be differ a bit. That would assume every activity takes 20% extra.

The cosmetic solution ...
1 - Copy & Paste "Start" to "Start1", and "Finish" to "Finish1" fields (i.e unused custom fields)
2 - Set the calendar: Saturday as ’nondefault working time’
3 - Now, copy & paste "START1" to "START" and "FINISH1" to "FINISH" - you should notice the duration has changed!
4 - Wait a sec... to complete the con-job (bad name), set all activities’ constraint type to -> As Soon As Possible! And maybe you want to clear the custom fields.

Though not accurate & unconventional, Your programme looked cosmetically great!
Start Date maintained, Finish Date Maintained, links maintained.
a plan that has no start or finish dates on the sixth day it is!
Agree, no straight solution, at least its a free advise :)

Honestly, unadvisable the planning way.

Have a nice day.

Please shoot if theres discrepancy (or don’t understand me typo)

p/s: Probably thanks that the early plan was for 5-day week (recommended for some float). If it was 7-day 24-hour shift week... (I don’t know where to get the 8th day!)


Yazeer
Petronas Malaysia
yazeer_jay@hotmail.com
yazeer@petronas.com.my