Hello again and welcome back to our course on Project 2016 Advanced.
In this section I’m going to look at importing data into Project and in the next section
I’m going to look at exporting data from Project.
So there are various ways in which data can be presented to you for import to Project
2016.
One very common way is in the form of an Excel workbook.
In this case I have a workbook with a single sheet and it’s just got four columns on
it, Task Name, Start Date, Finish Date, and Scheduled Work.
Note that the first row contains the four headings.
Now if I want to create a project on the basis of this one of the most straightforward ways
is from Project to open this workbook.
So let me just switch into Project.
So File, Open.
Now I’m going to browse to the course files folder.
By default Open gives me access to MPP files.
But if I look at the dropdown here where MPP is the default the other options are Project
Templates, three options for Excel workbooks.
That’s the current Excel workbook format, the Excel binary workbook format and the older
Excel workbook format.
It’s the first one I’m going to use in just a moment.
The other three options here are Text files, CSV files, XML files.
Now if I select the first one it’s going to take me into the Import Wizard.
Click on Open.
There’s the Import Wizard.
Now one of the important things here is to just bear in mind am I going to need to do
this import again?
Am I going to, for example, get a workbook every week with an update to the project?
If I’m going to have to do this import again then it’s a good idea to save a map or I
should say the map of what this import involves.
So when I click on Next one of the options is Do you want to create a new map here or
do you want to use an existing map?
If you’ve done an equivalent import before you can save yourself some time by using an
existing map.
Now as you’ll see in just a moment if you do decide to save the map that gets created
anyway you will be able to use it again quite easily and you manage maps using the Organizer.
So click on Next.
Now how do you want to import this file?
Do you want to create a new project?
Do you want to append the data to the active project?
Or do you want to merge the data into the active project?
If it’s a brand new project, which is what I’m going to do in this case, straightforward
enough.
If you want to append the data to the active project literally whatever I import will be
added at the end and then if I need to any more to incorporate it that’s up to me.
If I want to merge it into the active project then I will need to have decided on and defined
one field to be the merge key.
And the merge will be done on the basis of the value in the merge key.
So the merge key must be one of the fields that’s present in the existing project and
that’s exists in the data you’re importing.
And of course it must be in the import map as well.
Now on this occasion, as I say, I’m going to do this as a new project so click on Next.
We looked at the Excel workbook just now and the information in there only relates to tasks.
But I also pointed out that our input data does include headers.
So it’s important to make sure that box is checked so that Microsoft Project doesn’t
try to process the first row on the worksheet as though it was data.
It will realize that’s a header row now and ignore the first row.
Next again.
And now what I’m looking at is a representation of the map.
So now we need to set up this task mapping.
First of all if there is more than one worksheet in the workbook you select the sheet from
the dropdown list at the top here.
Now our particular workbook only has one worksheet so that’s straightforward enough.
And then what has happened is that Project 2016 has looked at the sheet, looked at the
names of the Excel fields and tried to work out which fields they correspond to in Microsoft
Project.
Now of course it wasn’t that difficult but it still managed to make a pretty good job
of it.
So it’s decided that the field that’s called Name in Excel is probably Name in Microsoft
Project.
Start Date is probably Start, Finish Date is probably Finish, Scheduled Work is probably
Work.
And in fact on this occasion that’s correct.
If I had had data in the Excel workbook that I didn’t want to import and maybe Project
still tried to map a column to a project field, maybe come up with an answer that was wrong
or maybe come up with an answer that was right but if for any reason I don’t want to deal
with a particular field if I select it, click on Delete Row it won’t be imported.
So the mapping will not deal with that particular column and field.
Now of course I need to check the mapping is correct.
And if say it’s taken the scheduled work field in Excel and it isn’t really the work
field in Project, it’s something else I can actually just click the dropdown here
and say what it should be.
So that’s pretty easy to change any that are wrong.
But once you’re happy with them all click on Next and I now have the opportunity to
save this map.
If I click on Save Map and give it a suitable name, click on Save, that will be saved in
the Organizer and I can use it again.
Click on Finish.
You will very often get a warning about Project start dates.
In this case the data I’ve imported is actually quite old data and it’s an old project which
I am going to use again starting from a date round about now.
Now as you know when Project 2016 creates a new project it will normally create it with
today’s date as the start date.
This is quite old data so there’s a conflict there.
But if I click on OK I’ll fix the conflict in just a moment.
So there is my imported data.
I haven’t been through every row obviously but that looks about right to me so that’s
pretty good.
Let me deal with that Project start date question.
Let’s go into Project Information.
It has set today as the start date.
Let me put it back to roughly where it should be and then I can move the whole project later.
Let’s start it from 1st of April.
That gets rid of that conflict.
And there you are.
You’ve got a pretty good view of the whole project now as well.
Now you may realize that, for instance, in the case of tasks 2 down to 14 we’re actually
dealing with a summary task and subtasks.
So I may want to put a bit of structure back into that.
But that’s a bit of a detail really.
There is my import successfully done.
Note also that Project has used the name of the workbook as the first part of the name
of this project.
So I’m going to save this project now.
That’s now in the course files folder.
Now let me close that one and let’s suppose I was going to do this import again from a
new version of that workbook.
When I get to the relevant point in the Import Wizard, Use existing map.
It gives me a list of the maps that are currently being managed by the Organizer.
I can select that one and then pretty much the rest of the jobs done for me really.
Let’s now look at another alternative for importing data.
In this case I’ve just created a table in Word.
It has just a list of tasks, three alternative plans for doing some work for a customer.
Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. It’s more or less just a set of notes really with some time
estimates and the basic tasks involved in each of these three alternative plans.
It’s usually possible to import data into Project just by Copy and Paste.
So once again normally you have to be careful about header rows and so on but let’s suppose
I’m going to take everything except the top row of this table, copy it to the clipboard.
Now I’ll switch back into Project, select the Project Table.
Now note again the important thing here is that the two columns that the table begins
with, this is a default entry table, task name and duration are the two that I’m copying
and pasting.
If they weren’t as in the previous example I’d need to rearrange the table.
So I do the paste and although some of the things like start and finish date won’t
really mean much at the moment the basic information is there.
So I’ve got Plan A with it’s for constituent tasks.
I could, for example, select those, indent them, give them a bit of structure, and now
I just clear up what should be the empty rows in between and then of course I can set about
whatever needs to be done next which may be to look at resources, assignments, work, cost,
etcetera.
So we’ve looked at importing by opening a file and potentially using the Import Wizard.
We’ve looked at copy and paste.
I want to look at one other special case here and that is the case which actually quite
a few people use where they want to import the contents of an Outlook Task List.
Sometimes people might be using Outlook, make a list of things that need to be done, start
to sort it into some kind of order and then they say what I really need to do now is to
put this list into Microsoft Project.
I’m looking here at Outlook 2016 and you can see a short list of tasks there.
Clearly a list with four tasks in it would almost be as quick to type them into Project
but the same would apply no matter how many tasks are in the list.
And when you look at that list you’ve got a start date and a due date and as you may
know if you use Outlook there are quite a few other fields available as well.
Some of those fields potentially correspond to fields in Project.
Now in fact although this does work the number of fields, the amount of information you can
actually transfer is quite limited.
The four tasks I’ve got here are in chronological order.
And if I double click on the first one it opens up this dialog where you can add or
modify the information about a task in Outlook.
And you have things like Percent Complete.
I have Percent Complete here set at 50%.
Well although that sounds like an ideal candidate for Microsoft Project in fact that 50% wouldn’t
be imported.
Not even the start date and date get imported.
The things that get imported are the subject, in this case Prepare Proposal which becomes
the task name and this note will be imported as well.
And just one other thing really and that is if you go to the Details option in the Show
group on the Task tab within this Task Maintenance dialog.
The total work, in this case it’s set to one week, will be interpreted as the duration
of the task.
So that really is a very limited amount of information that will be taken in.
Having said that if somebody is effectively jotting down notes, list of tasks, maybe writing
some important notes about each of those tasks it can be a useful way of getting that information
into Project.
So let’s switch into Project now and import that list.
So I have a new empty project here and on the Task tab in the Insert group the bottom
of the Task button one of the options is Import Outlook Tasks.
Now when I click on that I see a list of tasks.
Now in the Outlook you’ve just looked at there are only those four tasks.
If there were more this is actually a structured list.
So for instance, at the very outside we have access to the Outlook Folder Tasks.
So if I checked that box I would get all of the tasks within Outlook for this user.
Now if the tasks had categories and I was looking at them grouped by category here,
if I wanted just a particular category I could check that and just get that category.
On the other hand if I just wanted an individual task I could select an individual task.
Now on this occasion since I have no categories I really want everything in the folder, the
simplest thing is to just check the whole folder there and click on OK.
And there are my four tasks.
Now notice they all get start date of the project start date which is today.
The total work values have been interpreted as duration.
So the finish dates have been set accordingly.
And the other interesting point is that the tasks are imported in alphabetical order of
task name which isn’t necessarily very helpful.
And then if I hover over one of the notes you can see the notes that I added in Outlook.
I can then of course save this project as a normal project and then start to do what
I need to do with it.
Put in dependencies, get things into order and so on.
Note that although it interpreted total work as duration when it did the import the work
in each case is set to zero hours.
So as I say I do know some people that use this but it does have some fairly clear limitations
as you can see.
That’s the end of this section.
I’ll see you in
the next one.