How to make start and finish date in microsoft Project non inclusive

Question

If i entered start date as Monday and duration is 5 days I get finish date as next monday. But i want it to be friday. (Considering no special days offcourse)

For example, this is the default i have:

as seen above, t1 end date equals t2 start date. as dates are inclusive.

But I was looking at a tutorial and saw that presenter already changed it.. but don't know how to do it: task with 4 days already start on 12th and ending on 15th, and next one by default added one day on the start date..

so it is here easy i guess for tracking. but don't know how to change it

Answer 1

You'll often run into the the issue like the one you showed in the first screenshot because tasks aren't starting at the beginning of the work day. Normally, you want all your tasks to start at the beginning of the work day and finish at the end of the work day.

To diagnose the problem, first and foremost you need to add the time of day to the default date format. You can do this in the Project Options form (Click File at the top left of the MS Project window --> Options) from here you can set the date format to include the time of day.

In a typical scenario, tasks will start at the beginning of the day (8:00 is the default for project) and you would expect to see this:

But look what happens if t1 is starting at 13:00 instead of 8:00:

A task could be starting at a time different than the beginning of the day due to several factors:

1. The default start and end time of your project could not be the normal times

You can see/change the default start and end time of a day in the project options menu:

2. The task could have a constraint date on it that forces it to start at that time

3. The predecessor driving it could finish prior to the end of the day.

4. The calendar applied to the project or task could have working times that start at a different time of day than the project's default times

In MS Project, you can create calendars for your projects that have different working times than the default start and end dates. You can check what calendar your project is using by clicking the Project tab --> Project Information:

By default, MS Project will set the calendar to Standard but you can change this to a different calendar and/or change the working times of the standard calendar. You can access options for the project calendars by clicking the Project tab --> Change Working Time. From here you can check the normal working times any calendar by clicking on any working date:

If the working time for days in the calendar you have applied to your project does not start at the beginning of the day it could be the cause of your issue.

You can change the working times on a calendar in the form by clicking Work Weeks --> Details:

Note that each task in the schedule could have a different calendar applied to it than the project's default. You can see what calendar any task is using by opening the Task Calendar column in the gantt table:

If the tasks have ""None" set for task calendar it means they are using the project's default calendar.