Import and export formats

Import and export formats

Per file format: whether you can open, save and export it, what does and does not go along and which calculation profile it opens with. The why behind all this, and an example with numbers, is in Files and formats.

At a glance

Opening works with IFC, CSV, MS Project XML, Primavera P6 XML, .mpp and .xer. A file with any other extension is treated by the app as IFC.

Saving always writes IFC. Only an opened IFC file becomes the save target; a project from another format has no file after opening, and Save then asks where the IFC file should go.

Exporting works to IFC, MS Project XML, Primavera P6 XML, CSV and two progress sheets (Excel and CSV). An export does not change your project.

Read-only are .mpp and .xer: the app can open them, not write them.

PDF only comes from a report (see Report types). The app does not read PDF.

Where. Opening: Home › File › Open, File › Open or Ctrl+O. Exporting: Home › File › Export or File › Export. You read a filled-in progress sheet in via File › Import, or with the button Update progress from a spreadsheet in the ribbon group Progress on the Planning, Table and Report tabs.

Calculation profile on opening. Every format opens with a calculation profile; what that is, is in Calculation options and conventions. .xer opens with Primavera P6, .mpp with Microsoft Project, and CSV, MS Project XML and P6 XML with Open Planner Studio. IFC keeps the profile stored in the file. For .xer and .mpp the app reports that the project calculates this way. Only IFC carries the calculation profile and the calculation options; of the calculation options, MS Project XML writes at most the critical threshold. A reopened export of another format calculates as Open Planner Studio.

IFC

Open — yes, .ifc. The app reads IFC4 and IFC 4.3 (also ADD2). A file in another schema, such as IFC2X3, opens too. At the first save you then choose a schema that the app can write (see Choosing the IFC schema). Calculation profile: the one in the file.

Save — yes, and it is the only format that saves. Save writes your whole project as an IFC file, in the IFC schema of the project (IFC 4.3 ADD2 by default). The file becomes the save target.

Export — yes, as IFC, in the IFC schema of the project (default IFC 4.3 ADD2). Default name: the project name with the extension .ifc. If your project is linked to a resource library, the checkbox Save library file alongside is below the cards in File › Export. Ticked, the app asks for a place for projectname-bibliotheek.ifc after the project. The checkbox is not in the list on the Home tab.

What goes along — everything that belongs to the project: tasks with structure, duration, dates and progress; relations with lag; constraints and deadlines; calendars; resources and assignments, including the hour distribution; baselines; activity codes and custom fields; notes; external links to other projects; interruptions; task types and custom work categories; the project settings such as the status date, the progress mode, the calculation profile and the calculation options; the link with a resource library. For a project from a .xer, the original source file goes along too. A custom work category is stored as the IFC type USERDEFINED with its name in the ObjectType field, so other IFC programs read the task normally; the app also keeps the fixed id of the work category, so renaming does not break the link. If someone opens the file on another computer, the work category appears there under From this project, not in their own My work categories.

What does not go along — how you have set up the screen (zoom, scroll position, selected task, collapsed phases, chosen filter and grouping) and the app settings (App settings). The IFC tab is an editor with the IFC text of your project. Generate IFC refreshes it, Copy puts it on the clipboard and Apply loads the text as your project, replacing the project in that tab.

MS Project XML (MSPDI)

Open — yes. The app recognises an .xml file as MS Project XML by the root element Project in the MS Project namespace (or without a namespace). Calculation profile: Open Planner Studio. After opening, the app tells you in one message what it did not take over; see Opening an MS Project file (.mpp).

Save — no. Such a project gets no save target.

Export — yes, as MS Project XML (Opens in Microsoft Project. Full WBS structure.). Default name: the project name with .xml.

What goes along — tasks with structure (level and WBS), duration, dates and progress; relations with lag, also in hours or percentages; constraints, including the deadline; calendars, including task and resource calendars; resources and assignments, including the curve or hour distribution; the status date; the critical threshold, as a whole number of work days of 0 or more with Total float ≤ threshold; the description of a task (as a note); the task type of a task (as the MS Project task type); a custom work category, in a free field (ExtendedAttribute) that the app reads back and that MS Project may ignore. Of your baselines only the active one goes along, as baseline 0. A task in hours keeps its unit, and a milestone its kind (start, finish or automatic).

What does not go along — notes (the checklist on a task), external links to other projects, activity codes and custom fields, a second constraint, the marking Manually scheduled, the leveling delay, the resume and stop point of an out-of-sequence task, the conventions Remaining work resumes after the elapsed duration and Don't move unstarted tasks to the status date of an MS Project profile, and the other calculation options. Interrupted tasks without an hour distribution go along without their interruptions.

Holidays when opening. A derived calendar inherits the exceptions of its base calendar. A calendar with its own work week and no exceptions gets no holidays. Only a bare calendar, without a base calendar, work week or exceptions, keeps the standard Dutch holidays. If holidays are missing, your finish date can differ: see Generating holidays and the construction holiday.

What changes on the way — a constraint Must start on (MSO) or Must finish on (MFO) without the choice Mandatory (pin logic) becomes Start no earlier than (SNET) or Finish no earlier than (FNET). A hammock becomes an ordinary task with calculated dates. MS Project XML stores the hours per day only for the project calendar. Another calendar with its own hours per day gets its working time as hours per day when you open the file: 8 hours per day with working times of 10 hours becomes 10. A task in days on such a calendar then gets shorter, for example 4 days instead of 5.

MS Project file (.mpp)

Open — yes, from MS Project 2010 through 2021. Calculation profile: Microsoft Project. The app only reads the file: it never changes your .mpp. A file from MS Project 2007 or older, and a password-protected file, it refuses with a message that points to the XML export of MS Project. After opening, the app tells you in one message what it did not take over.

Save — no, and there is no save target: Save writes a new IFC file.

Export — no.

What goes along — tasks with structure, duration and constraints; relations with lag; calendars; resources and assignments; progress; a WBS code that you filled in yourself in MS Project. The dates and float that MS Project calculated itself are read too, for the view Dates as recorded.

What does not go along — baselines, costs and rates, notes, hyperlinks, the custom fields of MS Project, the link of subprojects and external tasks, and the critical threshold. See Opening an MS Project file (.mpp).

Origin and license — the .mpp reader was written for Open Planner Studio and is derived from the source code and structural knowledge of MPXJ (github.com/joniles/mpxj, Jon Iles et al.), a Java library under LGPL-2.1. Structure and field constants were ported to TypeScript. Open Planner Studio itself is open source under LGPL-3.0. The .xer reader is not a derivative: MPXJ was only consulted there as a source of understanding.

Primavera P6 XML

Open — yes. The app recognises an .xml file as P6 XML by the root element APIBusinessObjects. Calculation profile: Open Planner Studio.

Several projects in one file. Each project with activities opens in its own tab, named Project name (Project ID). The app skips a project without activities. The active tab is the project with the most activities. The app does not carry over a relation to another project, nor an activity that belongs to no project. After opening, the app reports how many projects it opened.

Holidays when opening. The same rules apply as for MS Project XML: a calendar with its own work week and no exceptions gets no holidays.

Baselines. A <BaselineProject> in the file becomes a baseline of its project. The baseline that P6 marks as active is also active in the app.

Rate of an assignment. If work remains, the remaining rate (RemainingUnitsPerTime) becomes the Units/day. Otherwise it is the planned rate (PlannedUnitsPerTime). For material the planned rate stays. The app recalculates nothing when it opens the file. On an export to P6 XML it writes the planned rate as PlannedUnitsPerTime. It writes the remaining rate as RemainingUnitsPerTime only when the assignment has a separate planned rate.

No readable activities. If the app finds no activity it can read, it does not open a tab. It reports this, with the reason when it is known. Examples: activities without an ObjectId, or XER column names in an XML file. Then export the project from P6 again as P6 XML, or open it as .xer.

Save — no.

Export — yes, as Primavera P6 XML (For Oracle Primavera P6.). Default name: the project name with .xml, with the project ID in brackets if the project has one. An MS Project XML export gets the same name: give them different names yourself.

Project name and project ID. The app keeps the project ID from P6 separate from the project name, as with an .xer. Project settings shows only the name, for example Bid for Facility Extension. The tab shows Bid for Facility Extension (OZB-05). If you rename the project to Hall extension, the tab is called Hall extension (OZB-05). An export to P6 XML writes OZB-05 back as the project ID and Hall extension as the name. That way P6 recognises the project. A project from an .xer also takes its project ID along. The project ID stays when you save the project as IFC. Brackets in the name itself, such as New build (phase 2), stay in the name. A project without a project ID gets a unique ID of its own from the app at export, starting with OPS:.

What goes along — WBS structure and tasks with duration, dates and progress; relations with lag; constraints (also a second one, as a soft constraint); calendars; resources and assignments; the status date (as DataDate); a custom work category, in a field of its own, OPS Custom Task Type, that the app reads back and that P6 may ignore.

What does not go along — baselines and deadlines; activity codes, custom fields, notes and external links; the calculation options; the names of holidays. P6 has no name per day off: after reopening, a holiday is called Holiday and a working exception Working exception. Consecutive days off come back as one range. The app shortens a name or code that is longer than P6 allows: an activity name to 120 characters, an activity ID or WBS code to 40, a WBS or project name to 100. It reports how many names and codes it shortened. P6 has no lag in percentages: the app converts it to a fixed number of days. A lag in calendar days becomes a lag in working time: 3 calendar days become 3 work days. A hammock becomes an ordinary task, a manually scheduled task an ordinary task with calculated dates, and a leveling delay of less than a day is dropped.

Primavera file (.xer)

Open — yes. Calculation profile: Primavera P6. The app only reads the file: it does not write .xer and never changes your file. It opens one tab per project with tasks. A file without activities or with damaged tables it refuses with a message.

Save — no, and there is no save target: Save writes a new IFC file, with the original .xer inside.

Export — no. If you export a project from a .xer to CSV, MS Project XML or P6 XML, the app reports that XER source information is lost, even if you saved the project as IFC in between. To IFC nothing is lost.

What goes along — the WBS structure and activities with duration, dates, constraints and progress; relations with lag; calendars; resources with assignments; activity codes; custom fields (UDFs); notes; the scheduling settings of P6. An activity of the type Level of Effort becomes a hammock. A baseline project becomes the active baseline of the project that refers to it. A relation between two projects is kept by the app as source data.

Rate of an assignment. If work remains, the remaining rate (remain_qty_per_hr) becomes the Units/day. Otherwise it is the planned rate (target_qty_per_hr). The planned, actual and remaining work stay as in the file. For material the planned rate stays.

A free Saturday or Sunday that is not in the file. Some P6 exports move a free weekend day inside a block of several free days to the Friday before or the Monday after. If the calendar works on Saturday or Sunday, that day would wrongly become a working day. If the app sees that pattern in a block of at least three free days, it makes that weekend day free after all. In the calendar the day is called Calendar exception (weekend reconstruction), and it counts in the line N calendar findings. of the message. On a calendar that does not work at the weekend, nothing changes.

Float up to the project finish, without a finish date. Is the P6 option on to calculate float up to the project finish, but does the file have no finish date for the project and no planned finish date for any activity? Then the app turns off the option Calculate float up to the project finish date. It then calculates the late dates back from the latest early finish. That counts in the line N P6 scheduling settings used safe fallbacks.

Completed activities on the data date. Some files do not record the actual dates of a completed activity, but a window on the data date. In the view Dates as recorded such an activity is then a narrow bar on the data date. If recalculating puts it in a different place, it counts in the number of tasks that the strip gives. The convention Completed task in the data-date window calculates such a window, and only with that convention does a completed task get a real float through the calculation option Completed task: late dates from the data date. This convention is an approximation: the app saw this behaviour only in P3 output, and Primavera does not confirm it anywhere. That is why it is off in every built-in profile, also under Primavera P6. You turn it on in the block Calculation profile and options; the project then gets a custom profile. See Calculation options and conventions.

Numbers with a comma as decimal separator. P6 records the decimal separator and the thousands separator in the table CURRTYPE. The app reads those characters before it converts durations, work and float. If that information is missing, the app uses a point as decimal separator. If the file still contains numbers with a decimal comma, the app opens nothing. That way a schedule with wrongly read numbers never opens.

What does not go along — a project without activities, and a relation between two projects as a real relation in your schedule. See Opening a Primavera P6 file (.xer).

CSV

Open — yes. The app reads ; and , as separator. It recognises column headers in English and Dutch (for example Name or Naam, Duration or Duur, Predecessors or Voorgangers). Dates may be yyyy-mm-dd, dd-mm-yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy. You write a predecessor as WBS code, relation type and lag, for example 1.2FS+2d. Calculation profile: Open Planner Studio. The project is called CSV Import. The Task Type column holds the work category, not the task type; the app also reads the headers Werksoort and Work category. A Task Type that is none of the fixed codes (such as CONSTRUCTION or INSTALLATION, which the app writes itself) becomes a custom work category under From this project, not in My work categories; with OPS Custom Task Type ID the id of a custom work category is kept.

Save — no.

Export — yes, as CSV (;) (Universal table export. All tasks with dates and durations.), on the card CSV (semicolon-separated). The file uses a semicolon as separator, is in UTF-8 with a BOM and has English column headers.

What goes along — per task these columns: OPS Task ID, WBS, Outline Level, Name, Duration (days), Start, Finish, Predecessors, Task Type, OPS Custom Task Type ID, Status, Completion (%), Actual Start, Actual Finish, Critical, Total Float and Description. The Task Type column holds the work category. Completion is in whole percentages. A lag in hours gets the hour sign of the app language: 1.2FS+2h in English, 1.2FS+2u in Dutch. Opening reads both.

What does not go along — resources, assignments, calendars, constraints, deadlines, baselines and the status date. If the dates are in the view Dates as recorded, the export leaves Critical and Total Float empty for tasks whose source file did not record that.

Progress sheet (Excel and CSV)

Open — yes, via File › Import (Update progress from a spreadsheet) or via the button of that name in the ribbon group Progress on Planning, Table and Report. The app reads .xlsx and .csv, up to 16 MB and 50,000 rows. This does not open a project: it updates the progress of your open project. See Importing progress from a spreadsheet.

Save — no.

Export — yes, as Progress sheet (Excel) (Progress (Excel) in the list) and Progress sheet (CSV) (Progress (CSV)). Default name: projectname-voortgang. The button Export progress sheet in the same ribbon group makes the Excel sheet in one click. The Excel sheet has fixed column widths, locked fields and date checking; the CSV sheet is the same content as plain text.

What goes along — the columns OPS Task ID, WBS, Name, Start, Finish, Completion (%), Actual Start and Actual Finish. When reading it in, the app uses Completion (%), Actual Start and Actual Finish; Start and Finish only serve to recognise the date notation and do not change your schedule. The app links rows to tasks by the OPS Task ID, or otherwise by a unique WBS code.

What does not go along — everything outside these columns: duration, relations, resources and the rest of your schedule. A summary task gets no progress from the sheet.

PDF

Open — no.

Save — no.

Export — yes, from a report: on the Report tab the button Export PDF. The app does not send a report to a printer itself; the way to paper is via the PDF. The content depends on the report type: see Report types and Making and printing a report.

See also

• Files and formats: why IFC is the own format and what an export loses, with an example.
• Opening and saving a file: the steps.
• Exporting: choosing a format and the messages after an export.
• Dates as recorded: why an opened file can show other dates.
• Calculation options and conventions: the calculation profiles.