Incorrect Finish Date being imported...

[satnamx]

Hi All...

I have the following problem importing poject data from excelinto MSP.

I am importing "start","finish", "duration"(finish-start
+1), "actual start" date and "actual finish" date.

The problem is that the finish date seems to be defaulting to yesterdays date as opposed to the date stored in the finish date field.

I have created an import map to do this, but i keep getting this error?

I am using MSP 2003 SP1.

Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated?!
Kind Regards
Satnam

 

[PDQBach]

If you know the Duration why are you importing the Finish Date?

If this is a "once off" then I always copy and paste from Excel into Project.

1. Task name, start date, work and duration
2. Other fields (text, resources).

Invariably you'll have to fiddle resource allocations.


If you are going to do this more than once (actually, *many* *many* times more than once) then take a good schedule and export it to Excel. This will create a map. Use that map to import.

 

[satnamx]

Hi.. thank you for the post, but unfortunately it dosnt help as I am working on a project to migrate over 300 project plans.

unfortunately simply copying and pasting from excel to MSP is not a viable option.

I have already produced a data map in MSP. I have found that if a task has an entry in the assignments tab along with a resource , then the finish date comes across as the current date-1 which is incorrect.

so Im still stumped as to why the finish date is not coming across correctly?

Kind Regards
Satnam

 

[PDQBach]

Yeah, if you're doing 300 that certainly qualifies as the " *many* *many* " phrase I used earlier!

It has been quite a while since I last imported a bunch of schedules so I played around a bit. In the end ... I cheated!

I opened the project I was exporting, displayed the column "Start1" which was, of course, empty. I did a column copy&paste from Start to Start1 and then I created my export map which I used to create an output XLS file to import later on.

I'm presuming that your spreadsheets have come from some external source. Since I added the Start1 column (containing a copy of the Start dates) you'll have to either modify the program you used to create the XLS files from existing projects or you'll have to go into each spreadsheet and create the new "Start1" column with a copy of the Start column data.

After doing the import, I copied the Start1 column and pasted it over the Start column data. This solved the Start/Finish issue but, of course, put SNET Constraints on the tasks.

Note that I did not adjust the Finish date. As I said earlier, that can be derived from the Start + Duration values.