Handling Milestones when importing project plan data from Excel

I need import project plan data from Excel. I do this copying the data from Excel and pasting into Smartsheet. It works fine except Milestones aren't correctly handled. Tasks in Excel with the same start and end date and a duration of zero, when pasted have a duration of 1d meaning they are not recognised as milestones by Smartsheet. I then have to manually set the Duration to 0 in Smartsheet for them to be recognised.

Is there a way for these to be automatically recognised as Milestones?

Here is an example of the Excel data I am pasting:

Name	Status	Owner	Start	End	Duration
Task 1	Complete	Tom	10-Jan	16-Jan	5
Task 2	In Progress	Jane	17-Jan	30-Jan	10
Task 3	Not Started	Dick	17-Jan	21-Jan	3
Task 4	Not Started	Susan	31-Jan	05-Feb	4
Task 4.5	Not Started	Tom	06-Feb	12-Feb	5
Milestone 1	Not Started	Jane	12-Feb	12-Feb	0
Task 5	Not Started	Dick	20-Jan	07-Feb	15
Task 6	Not Started	Susan	06-Feb	13-Feb	6

Milestone 1 is given a duration of 1d when I paste into Smartsheet.

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Paul.Woodward

That seems pretty frustrating!!! Have you thought of using automations?

Set Up an Automation Rule:
- In Smartsheet, go to Automation > Create a Workflow.
- Set a trigger: "When rows are added or changed."
- Add a condition: If Start Date = End Date AND Duration = 1d.
- Action: Change Duration to 0d.

This rule will automatically correct tasks that should be milestones.

lawrenceway

Thanks for answer.

I can't see how to set such a condition - eg I can only set a date field equal to a specific date not to another field. I have quite restricted permisisons in my setup which may the issue here.

Genevieve P.

Hi @lawrenceway

There currently isn't a way to automatically adjust duration across your entire sheet like this. What I would suggest doing is set up a Filter on your sheet to make your manual job easier.

Filter by if the Duration = 1d, then check to see if any of these should be 0d instead.

Cheers,
Genevieve

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