Tip 754: Task Hours and Days

An Outlook user asked: “I need to know how to stop Outlook task items from converting/changing the number of hours needed to complete the task to the number of days.”

The User is talking about the hours worked on the Details page of an Outlook Task form or in the Total Work and Actual Work fields in a list view.
Outlook doesn’t have a specific setting for these fields – it uses the number of hours per day and week set in Tools, Options, Other tab, Advanced (or Options, Tasks in Outlook 2010) to calculate this field. The default is 8 hour days and 40 hour weeks and when the elapsed time is at least 8 hours and an even number it converts to days. You can confuse Outlook by setting the length of the work day to an odd number (up to 23 hours) and the hours in a week to an odd number. This makes it harder for Outlook to convert times to partial days or weeks and the hours worked are more likely to remain in hours. If you rarely work a task over 23 hours, you shouldn’t have problems, but if Outlook does convert them to a partial day or week, it will be harder to know the real hours worked.

Additionally, if you add these fields to a list view, you can change the formatting for the fields to 24 hrs = 1 day or 1 work day (as set in Options) = 1 day. Right click on the row of field names and choose Format Columns or Customize, Format Columns. “12 hour (Work day)” uses the hours set in Options to calculate the number of days while “12 hour” uses 24 hours in 1 day.

Published June 25, 2010. Last updated on June 17, 2011.