Description

Microsoft Office Project versions up to and including 2007 do not have any ability to import standard holidays as non-working time into the Global or specific project Base Calendars.  This is a very common requirement asked of our consultants during project training courses. 

This VBA enabled Microsoft Project Plan document is a prototype of a more comprehensive tool being developed by Thought Croft to import holidays into Microsoft Project Calendars. A step-by-step wizard approach is used to select specific holidays and import them into selected calendars.  This free version finds the Holiday File that ships with Microsoft Outlook (or a specific Holiday file can be downloaded and opened manually if Outlook is not installed) and then displays the holidays in a tree view for user selection.  From there, calendars can be selected from the Global Template or a specific Microsoft Project Plan document (*.mpp) to have the holiday dates marked as non-working.

Requirements

• This tool works in Microsoft Office Project versions 2002 - 2007 inclusive.  It should also work with 2010 but I have not been able to test this.
  
• Depending on your security settings, you may be prompted to allow macros to run which is required for this tool to operate.  The VBA project has been signed using an untrusted code signing certificate issued to "Warren Bain" by "Thought Croft Pty Ltd".  The code only modifies the selected BaseCalendars in the Global Project Template or the selected Project Plan document.
  
• A properly formatted Microsoft Office Outlook Holiday File is required as the source of holiday dates.  The tool will locate this file automatically if you have Outlook versions 2002 - 2010 installed on your computer.  You can also manually locate this file and if you have an Internet connection, the tool can also take you to a page where you can obtain more information about this file including links to download current versions of the file from Microsoft.  That page is http://www.outlook-tips.net/outlook-calendar/missing-holidays/.
  

Change History

• 27/06/12 v2.1 - now finds the holiday file for Outlook 2010.  It will also run in Project 2010 but I have not been able to test that it works correctly - please let me know.
  
• 07/04/10 v2.0 - add an option to import future holidays (default) or all holidays.  Corrected an error where click-and-drag would tick a node but not select all the holidays below that point.  The holiday list is now sorted A-Z.  Due to a bug in the Microsoft TreeView ActiveX, the holiday list can only be loaded into the Tree once per Wizard although different selections can be loaded into different project files.  The file browse dialogs are now centred on the screen.
  
• 02/04/10 v1.2 - correct minor bugs and improve error handling.
  
• 16/03/10 v1.1 - correct an error when converting Hebrew dates that fell in the second half of a non-leap year into Gregorian dates.
  
• 16/04/09 v1.0 - initial release.
  

Screenshots

Click on each image to see a larger version of the screenshot from the wizard.  Use your browser "Back" button to return to this page.

Blog

If you wish to provide feedback about this tool or make a suggestion for future development, click here to visit the Project Holiday Import Wizard blog.

Register

If you would like to know when we post a new version of this tool, click here to register for notification of future updates.

Download

To download this tool, right-click on the following link and choose Save Target As... or Save Link As... (depending on your browser) and then select a location on your computer.  Depending on your computer settings, left-clicking on this link may attempt to open the document directly in your browser and result in a security error that prevents the wizard from running correctly.

Right-click here to download the Project Holiday Import Wizard.mpp