Importing MS Project files to Smartsheet

Caravan

Hi Orginary Bob, have you tried 2000+ lines with pre-reqs? Mine pre-reqs and lines are messed up after using .mpp import.

Nigel Catling

I have just joined the Community and am stunned to see that these problems have existed for many years.

I have had these similar problems with activities moving, dates changing etc. when importing from MS Project. As other users I use Smartsheet exclusively for Scheduling, my reason is that MSP isn't compatible with MacOS. However I often need to interact with contractors using MSP and have to duplicate their work onto Smartsheet manually. This is a basic function of Smartsheet that doesn't work!

I will have a go at MSP 2007 recommendation from Ordinary Bob as this seems to be the only possible workaround other than manual copying.

What are Smartsheet ignoring this problem and still offering an upload from MSP option that manifestly doesn't work?

unclejohnjohn

I had my first shot at importing a .mpp file this morning on a zoom with smartsheet. I found two ways; I can't say at the moment where in the menus I found them, but I think one was "open" and the other was "import". Both had the option to filter for .mpp files and they seemed to produce the same result.

At first glance, it seemed to work, but as others have noted, some sub-tasks move up a level or two and /or are put under unrelated tasks and their successors were removed. This really fouled up the critical path calculation!

I tried saving from MS Project as the 2007 version but got warnings that some features will be removed; in my case several instances of manual scheduling. These were changed to automatic. The import into smartsheet looked much better but the problematic tasks were already automatic.

I try to use automatic as much as possible, and I can't say for sure that these instances were intentional but sometimes I have to fiddle with the settings to make the schedule behave.

My example is about 80 rows and that already seems too long to have to check carefully to see if it is correctly imported.

It does seem that after 5+ years the problems should be known to smartsheet and they could provide some details on what to expect.

barmach

Saving as a 2007 project file and then importing it worked like a charm for me.