Cost Data Not Exporting to Microsoft Project

Ray Vigo

I am a hardware engineer. My project engineer starts by handing me a Microsoft Project file so I can fill in the details of how long each task is going to take and how much cost will the labor and materials will be.

I prefer importing the project file into Smartsheet so I can easily arrange the trench work and subsequently mange day-to-day activities with Smartsheet. But before we get going with the project, I want to give my PE back his project completely filled with my details of Tasks, Subtasks, schedules and costs.

So I export my Smartsheet to Microsoft Project XML as is the only option from Smartsheet. No problems so far. Then I go into Microsoft Project and import the file as an XML and wala! there is the project file done.

The problem is that Microsoft Project does not show some columns I created. For example, let's say that it takes 2 weeks to get a part I must order. So the duration for this entry is 2w. However, I do not work 8 hrs per day during those 2 weeks on the part - I might work 15 min each day tracking the part for 2 weeks. So I have a column called Duration for the Gantt Chart and I created another column I called Effort where I put 0.25h, then multiply times 2 weeks times the labor rate to obtain the total cost of labor to obatin the part. I see the column called Effort in the XML file but Microsoft Project will not show it on the import. My question is why? What am I doing wrong?

Travis

Hi Ray, when we export sheets to XML we map the project related columns (task name, start, finish, duration, predecessor, and assigned-to) to the proper values in MS Project. If we find a Text/Number column called “Comments” we will map it to the notes field in the Project XML. All additional columns are exported using the additional numbered Text fields in a task. MS Project does not have “columns” like how Smartsheet does so column names are not preserved. MS Project and Smartsheet both format data very differently and we cannot guarantee the ability to perform ‘round-trips’ between the two applications.