In project planning, the length of time assigned to each schedule item significantly impacts the overall timeline. Depending on the specific requirements of your project, you have the option to either count weekends (Saturday and Sunday) in these durations or leave them out. 

The Include Weekends setting allows you to make this choice. By default, this setting is configured to exclude weekends. 

This article will detail the distinctions between including and excluding weekends and guide you on how to set up your schedule to suit your project's needs.

Including / Excluding Weekends

When the schedule is set up to exclude weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, being non-working days, are not counted in the calculation of effort measured in days. Therefore, a task that starts on a Tuesday and ends the following Wednesday is calculated as 7 days of effort.

However, if the schedule is configured to include weekends, then Saturdays and Sundays are considered working days. In this case, a task starting on a Tuesday and finishing the following Wednesday will show a total effort of 9 days, instead of 7 days.

The default setting for project schedules automatically excludes weekends.

Additionally, the weekend days are highlighted with a light grey background in the Day View on the Gantt chart, when weekends are excluded.

Setting the schedule to include or exclude weekends

To include weekends to your project schedule, follow these steps: 

• Go to the Project Workspace and navigate to the Schedule section. 
• Click on 'Edit in Gantt View'.
• At the top of the Gantt view, find the Include Weekends toggle and turn it on.
• A confirmation pop-up will appear. Click on Include Weekends to activate the feature.

If you need to exclude weekends from your schedule, follow these steps: 

• Turn the Include Weekends toggle off. 
• When the prompt appears, choose Exclude Weekends.

The Include Weekends setting in your project schedule can be toggled on or off as needed. Whenever this setting is changed, the effort allocated for each task will be recalculated to reflect this adjustment.

you  and this will only have an effect on the Task Duration.

NOTE: The Include Weekends setting in your project schedule can be toggled on or off as needed. Whenever this setting is changed, the effort allocated for each task will be recalculated to reflect this adjustment.

For more detail around how exclude weekends can effect project schedules - see the following  articles:

• Project Schedule: Creating and Updating Schedule Items with Exclude Weekends
• Project Schedule: How to replan linked dependencies with Include/Exclude weekends
• Project Schedule: How to update your MS Project plan with Include/Exclude Weekends