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Project Timelines without Weekends

How to create a project timeline that only shows weekdays

Most project timelines show all seven days in a week, which makes them misleading because no work is taking place over the weekend. OnePager helps you build a more accurate project timeline by shading or completely hiding weekends so that it's clear when work is being done and when it isn't.

Project timelines can hide or shade weekends to make it easier to see when work is being done.

OnePager lets you take any Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, Primavera P6, or Excel project plan and create a timeline that focuses only on weekdays, so that it doesn't look like work is taking place over the weekend.

Don't have OnePager yet? You can download a 15-day free trial to check it out.

  1. Start with your project plan. This example uses a project schedule from Excel, but you can use a Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, or Primavera P6 plan as well:

    Sample Excel project plan

  2. Next, click the OnePager button on the Add-Ins tab of Excel or Microsoft Project, or the OnePager desktop icon if you're using Smartsheet or Primavera P6:

    OnePager builds timelines from Microsoft Project or Excel.

  3. From the Start screen that appears, choose New, and choose your plan as the source file for your OnePager Gantt chart. You'll launch a timeline wizard:

    Timeline wizard

  4. Don't worry too much about getting your settings perfect. The first time around, you can take all of our recommendations and merely click the Create new chart to create your first timeline:

    Project timeline with weekends showing

This initial timeline does show weekends, which we want to remove so that only workdays are shown. There are two ways to do this:

Shade Weekends a Different Color

One option is to shade weekends in a different color so that they still appear in your chart, but that it's obvious that no work is taking place. To do this:

  1. Go to Home > Chart Properties > Time Axis > Format.
  2. Each day of the week can have its own color. To make weekends stand out as non-working, change the colors for Saturday and Sunday to gray, or something else of your choosing.

    Change Saturday and Sunday to a different color to indicate that no work is scheduled to take place.

  3. After clicking OK, OnePager will update your timeline to shade weekends in gray:

    Timelines with weekends shaded and grayed out

Hide Weekends from the Timeline

The second option is to hide weekends completely so that only working days (weekdays) are shown on the timeline. To do this:

  1. Go to Home > Chart Properties > Time Axis > Format.
  2. Each day of the week has a checkbox next to it. If you uncheck the boxes next to both Saturday and Sunday, they will be hidden from the timeline:

    Hide Saturday and Sunday from your project timeline.

  3. After clicking OK, OnePager will remove all weekends from the timeline so that only weekdays remain:

    Timelines with weekends hidden

This article discussed how to create a project plan that focuses on workdays by either shading or eliminating weekends from the timeline.

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