Tutorial Info
- Program: Oracle Primavera P6 Professional
- Version: All Versions
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Time to Complete: 5 minutes
Faster is better. That should be Oracle-Primavera’s mantra. Well, in this case it is!
When exporting data to excel from P6, it can take a while to choose which columns to export and what filters to use when running the Export Wizard. Here’s how to export your Activities list only in less than 10 mouse clicks.
Step 1 – Open an Activities Layout
Go ahead and open a layout that has the appropriate columns and filters set already for your export.
Step 2 – Use the “Export to Excel” right-click shortcut
Right-click on any activity on screen. Choose “Export to Excel” from the menu.
Step 3 – Save the Excel file
Choose the appropriate folder and save the file.
Step 4 – Open and Edit
Find and open the excel file. Edit, and reimport.
Wrap Up
This is one of those times where a shortcut can save you a significant amount of time. Using the File -> Export avenue to export data to Excel can take a some time and a lot of clicking to choose columns, filters and basically setup an reusable Excel export template.
The right-click option is definitely faster.
However, if you need to export other Primavera data, like Relationships, Expenses, Resource Assignments, etc., then you’ll have to use the File -> Export command as the right-click command only exports the Activities list.
For some reason, the right-click “Export to Excel” shortcut is only available from the Activities screen. AND it’s only available on the right-click menu, not the Edit menu…. so you’ll have to practice it a few times until it becomes habit.
Things for you to try
- If you export / import Activities data from excel regularly, set up an Activities Layout specifically for that purpose. Set the appropriate columns and filters(*see reference to gotcha below) in the Layout. Then you can quickly use the right-click “Export to Excel” shortcut to do the deed.
What else you should know
- Filters Gotcha: rolling date filters do not work when exporting data to Excel in general. So be sure your layout does not use a rolling date filters. Here’s a workaround to that gotcha.
4 Responses
Posts like this brighten up my day. Thanks for taikng the time.
Why when exporting to Excel is the WBS automatically included. The ID is the link to activity data?
I am trying to update the OD & Units for each activity from a different project but cannot because the WBS are different. If I import the data it will change my WBS in the new project.
Hi Peter,
I’m not completely sure why WBS is always included, but it seems you can’t not export the WBS Code column. I’m not completely sure what you are trying to accomplish – can you elaborate more? Can you not manipulate the fields in excel to preserve the wbs?
M
Hi Mchael
To expand I have an out put from Safran which only includes the activity ID, OD & Budget labor Units.
The activity ID’s match my P6 activity ID’s.
I was trying to save time by importing the ID OD & Budget Labor Units rather than have to go through the process of imputting the values manually in to P6.
If I manipulate the data to update the excel import file I would need to check that I have the ID’s in exactly the same order as the Safran output file otherwise I will import incorrect data.
I think the reason the WBS is always included in the Export file is to identfy the project for the import as the level 1 of the WBS = the Project.
I have now updated P6 manually as could not get a work around without maunually manipulating the data.