Hi,

I am trying to import an excel spreadsheet into P5. I've managed to get the activities in but I'm having trouble with the start dates, finish dates & the relationships. I have already exported another programme to have a look at the layout and headings for an excel template.

I have two questions

1) What columns do I need as a minimum when I am trying to do this. For instance, an activity export gave me columns saying pred project id, successor project id, pred relationship type, along with successors and predecessors and other columns. As for start and finsh dates I also got duration as well, which I know will be needed. etc.

If I need to fill in all those columns i.e. one says pred wbs, then what is the point? It would be quicker just to do it within Primavera one at a time. The spreadsheet I was given already had start dates, finish dates and relationships on it so all I want to do is find out how I can tinker with it so I can make a quick import to P5.

2) What format do I need for the cells of the columns. For some reason I just can't get them to match up and when I import the dates they automatically change to the data date. When I changed the data date and tried the import again, it made no change whatsoever, not even to the data that was originally put down as the original data date, so that stayed the same. In essence, it looks like it just imported the activities and automatically gave them a data date start date instead of actually putting in a proper date, which suggests to me that the dates aren't getting picked up from the excel spreadsheet.

When I mean format I mean, what I need to type in the cells, for instance is it something like 01-05-2011 08:00:00? Do I need to include a ' symbol at the start of every cell? Which for some reason I pick up. As for the relationships, do I need to include the project name before each relationship? i.e. projectA.1234 or is it enough to just state the activity id number?

Hopefully, someone can help me with this.

Regards

Graeme