Access the project options, by selecting Options on the File ribbon. By starting with a blank project and adjusting your settings for All New Projects where available, you only have to make these changes once.

These settings are being modified for all NEW projects. If you have existing projects that need to be changed, you will have to change each project individually and select the current project name while making the changes.

There are seven sections of project options:

• General
• Display
• Schedule
• Proofing
• Save
• Language
• Advanced

The handout Recommended Project Options Settings describes two types of settings. Required (R) settings are those that will impact how your schedule information is calculated and should be reviewed and changed accordingly. Optional (O) settings describe some of the options that are user choice, but describe why you may want to consider the suggested settings.

After the options have been set in each section, click OK  The current project should be closed and a new project started so that the options take effect.

Remember, if you have existing projects you will need to change each individually. Instead of selecting All New Projects for those, you will select the project that you are modifying.

Calendars

Another part of setting up your environment is creating or modifying the calendars needed for your project. Calendars define work days and hours, and non-working days.  A work day is any day that an activity can have progress.  A non-work day is any day that an activity cannot have progress.

We recommend, if possible, that you use the Standard calendar as your main Project Calendar and add your company holidays. To access the calendar definition, on the Project ribbon, in the Properties section, select Change Working Time.

The calendar you are currently modifying is shown under For calendar:.

If you can’t use the Standard calendar, you may select the Create New Calendar button to define an additional calendar.

Holidays are added under the Exceptions tab. The Name of the holiday is entered along with the Start and Finish dates for the holiday.

Selecting the Details… button on the Work Weeks tab allows you to modify the days off for the standard work week, as well as the working schedule (times) for individual days. We recommend that you not change the working schedule (times) unless absolutely necessary as this can cause inconsistencies and confusion for Start, Finish, Duration, and Total Slack calculations.

The changes you are making are to a copy of the calendar that is in the current project. Once the calendar has been modified to reflect your holidays, it can be saved to a file called global.mpt file using the Organizer so that it is accessible to all of your projects. This is covered in the Additional Tips and Tricks lesson.

Any calendars being used are incorporated into the calculations that Microsoft Project performs.

All projects that are created will have a Project Calendar automatically assigned. If it is a blank project, the Project Calendar will be the Standard calendar. If you create your project from a template, the Project Calendar will be whatever is assigned to the template project.

The Project Calendar is assigned in the Project Information dialog box accessed on the Project ribbon in the Properties section. By default, all tasks in the project will be calculated using the Project Calendar.

The Calendar is assigned from the pulldown list of existing calendars.

If you have some specific tasks that need to have a working schedule that is different than the project calendar, you may assign a Task Calendar to those tasks.

To assign the Task Calendar, select the task or tasks that need a special calendar, and choose the Information option on the Task ribbon in the Properties section.

Select the Advanced tab and choose that calendar for the task(s) from the pulldown list.

Or, you may insert the Task Calendar column into the table and select a specific calendar for those tasks from the pulldown list in the Task Calendar column. If a task has no Task Calendar assigned, the Task Calendar field will show None.

For both the Project Calendar and Task Calendar, any additional calendars needed must be created first, and then assigned.