User guide

Importing from Gantt Excel

You can bring charts across from a Gantt Excel workbook without retyping them. The workbook is only read, never changed.

How to import a chart#

Choose File › Import from Gantt Excel.
Pick the workbook (.xlsm or .xlsx) and click Open.
A workbook can hold several Gantt charts. Desktop Plan lists them all. Click the one to import.

Choosing a chart from the workbook.
If everything comes across unchanged, the chart opens straight away as a new plan. Otherwise Desktop Plan first shows what is different (see below). Click Import to carry on, or Cancel.
The imported plan hasn’t been saved yet. Press Ctrl+S and choose where to keep it.

To bring in another chart from the same workbook, import again.

With a licence, the imported plan opens in a new tab. In the free version it replaces the plan on screen, after asking you to save that one.

What comes across#

For each task: the name, outline level (phases), start, duration, % complete, milestones, priority, notes, the people, the four bar colours, baseline and actual dates, estimated, baseline and actual costs, manual work, your custom columns (Custom 1 to Custom 20), and the dependencies with their type and lag.

For the project: its name and lead, the currency, the estimated and baseline budgets, the timeline window and the theme, including a custom palette. A chart keeps its own way of setting % complete: one that works it out from today’s date opens that way, and one where you type it opens manual, whatever your own choice for new plans in Settings › General › How progress is set.

For each person: the name, the rate, the working week, the holidays and whether they take the organisation’s holidays. The organisation’s own row becomes the plan’s project calendar.

Both Day and Hourly charts can be imported. Hourly charts come across to the minute.

"Tasks are scheduled differently"#

Desktop Plan works out the dates again from your links and calendars, rather than copying them. Most of the time the result is the same. When it isn’t, you see a list of every date that would change before anything is imported:

The most common reason is a milestone. Gantt Excel starts the task after a milestone on the next day; Desktop Plan starts it the same day. One milestone early in a chain can move every task after it by a day.

Your choices:

Import and accept Desktop Plan’s dates. If you want the day’s gap after a milestone, add a lag of 1d to the link that leaves it (see Linking tasks) and check the dates.
Cancel and leave things as they are.

The same box also lists any links that had to be changed or left out (for example a link into a phase), and any people who had no working days or hours and were given the organisation’s.

What doesn’t come across#

Columns Desktop Plan works out for itself: WBS, status, the done tick, resource cost, late dates, float and critical.
On a Day chart, the shift times. Every working day becomes 08:00 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 17:00.
People’s colours. Everyone starts in blue; change them in the Resources panel.
Phase figures (duration, % and cost) are worked out again from the tasks inside. Desktop Plan weights % complete by each task’s length, so a phase’s % can differ from the one in Gantt Excel.
A custom column whose heading was renamed in Gantt Excel may not be found.

When an import is refused#

Message	What to do
That file is not an Excel workbook.	Choose the `.xlsm` or `.xlsx` file. Old `.xls` files can’t be read.
That workbook could not be read. It may be damaged.	Open it in Excel and save it again. Password-protected workbooks give this message too: remove the password first.
That workbook has no Gantt charts in it.	Check that it is a Gantt Excel workbook.
"…" has no tasks in it.	That chart is empty. Choose another.

There is no way to send a plan back to Gantt Excel.